Potpourri: Random Items of Interest
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This page contains links to content of potential interest to FCTA members, but which does not fit in a category elsewhere on the web site.
For Wisdom: Victor Davis Hanson ... Dennis Prager ... Jeffrey A Tucker
"Some of you readers with liberal leanings may find my opinions sting a little. That is okay. Liberalism is a disease from which you can be cured. Trust me, I'm a doctor!" -- Krayton Kerns, DVM (formerly The Montana Cow Doctor)
Edison 78s: Selected Oldies from the UCSB Gramophone Audio Archive, by FCTA's David Swink
Here are music selections from the UCSB (Berkeley) Library of cylinder and thick 78 rpm gramophone recordings, mostly with the Edison label, from the early 1900s. (No problem with Youtube and mp3 takedowns here.) Enjoy!
2024-09-06: Zerohedge: The Process Of Tyranny (and currently), by Brandon Smith
The usual stages of tyranny: increasingly bigger government, socialist control of resources, the melding of bureaucracy and corporate entities, demands for "social justice", collectivist propaganda, the abandonment of individual merit (economic and cultural Marxism), and finally, the adoption of Futurism (where history is deemed irrelevant). Futurism is, in my view, the key to all modern authoritarianism.
2024-08-04: FCTA: QR code Tutorial, by David Swink
The author examines what QR codes are, how they are constructed, relates his findings, and runs a test case.
2023-12-21: Brownstone: Why We Love the Nutcracker, by Jeffrey A. Tucker
What theater goers don't entirely realize is that they are watching something even more wonderful than what they see. In this one ballet, we gain a picture of a prosperous world that emerged in the late 19th century, was shortly shattered by war and revolution, and then was nearly killed off by the political and ideological experimentation of the 20th century.
2023-11-14: Free Press: Why I Am Now a Christian, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
As Edmund Burke asserts, "man is by his constitution a religious animal." Islamism understands this, and that's the secret of its mass appeal. We in the secular West are fighting a reactive battle: what vision now guides us? what banner do we rally around? Ali -- having been first a devout Muslim and then an aethist -- finds the answer in Christianity.
2023-04-25: Am Greatness: The Diversity Officer Employment Aptitude Test, by Stanley Ridgley
Demand for Diversity Officers may have peaked and may even be on the wane. The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion hustle is running its course and may soon be out of steam, but it's not too late to collect your share of the loot. This assessment reveals if you are a good candidate.
2022-11-19: Brownstone: Technocracy and Totalitarianism, by Aaron Kheriaty
20th-century totalitarian ideologies included Communism and Fascism. The 21st-century equivalent is "Scientism", requiring "experts" to explain what cannot be rationalized. Why bother with brute force and physical violence, when defamation and exclusion from public discourse works just as effectively -- Fascism by peaceful means.
2022-10-24: NY Post: How Woke Mobs Took Over Corporations, by Jennifer Sey
Most CEOs lack the moral courage to hold their ground. Because they know, deep down, that they aren't do-gooders, and they don't want that curtain lifted. So they kowtow to the very vocal minority. These CEOs are frauds and have no actual courage.
2022-10-12: Epoch Times: Raising Girls to be Real Women, by Annie Holmquist
Boys are getting sucked into the feminist vortex of our culture, but that vortex also is swallowing girls at perhaps an even greater frequency. So how do we raise our girls to be real women, the kind who are loving, gentle, and kind, instead of brazen, brash, and self-centered?
2022-10-11: Brownstone: The Quarantine of Healthy Populations, by Aaron Kheriaty
From the lepers in the Old Testament to the Plague of Justinian in Ancient Rome to the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, covid represents the first time ever in the history of managing pandemics that we quarantined healthy populations. ... Lockdowns were the first and decisive step in our embrace of the biomedical security state.
2022-09-13: WT: Fascism for dummies, by Clifford D. May and Alexander Hunter
Those using the word should at least know what it means. Political cartoonist HUNTER summarizes: "Under Communism, the state is everything and tells people what to do; under Fascism, the state colludes with business and tells people what to do. So Fascism is basically Communism with more 5G coverage and better lattes."
2022-08-29: Substack: The Psychology of Totalitarianism, by Mattias Desmet
As the author's new book relates in detail, the world is in the grips of mass formation -- a dangerous, collective type of hypnosis -- as we bear witness to loneliness, free-floating anxiety, and fear giving way to censorship, loss of privacy, and surrendered freedoms. It is all spurred by a singular, focused crisis narrative that forbids dissident views and relies on destructive groupthink.
2022-08-15: Zerohedge: Globalization Hits a Wall, by Charles Hugh Smith
Globalization enabled mobile capital to swoop in, buy up local assets, create new markets for credit and imported goodies and then sell at the top before all the external costs of globalization came due and the credit bubble burst. Now that the global credit bubble is bursting, the mobile capital exploitation party is over. Now the game is to exit Periphery nations and move the winnings of globalization to the Core for safekeeping.
2022-08-03: Brownstone: In Defense of Uncertainty, by Julie Ponesse
If we're entitled to feel certain about anything, wouldn't you expect it to be the little things in life? The coffee mug is where we left it, the gas bill arrives on the 15th. Instead, we seem to reserve certainty for the things we should be least certain about: climate change, Covid policy, the effectiveness of gun control, what it means to be a person, the real causes of inflation.
2022-06-27: Zerohedge: It's Not the End of the World, by Jeff Thomas
We're passing through a period in history in which the process of removing freedoms is nearing completion in many of the world's foremost jurisdictions. The EU and US, in particular, are leading the way in this effort. Consequently, it shouldn't be surprising that some predict "the end of the world." But, they couldn't be more incorrect.
2022-06-15: Brownstone: The Emergence of Neo-Fascism in Public Health, by David Bell
Fascism is the art of hiding the truth behind a facade of wholesome virtue. Mussolini's happy smiling youths of the 1930s were actually being trained in the arts of self-righteousness, denigration of wrong-think, and collective obedience. They knew they were right, and that the other side was the problem. Does that sound familiar?
2022-05-02: Epoch Times: Rebuilding the Foundations With McGuffey Readers, by Annie Holmquist
Today's textbooks are often passing along concepts that don't lay a good foundation to turn students into happy, successful citizens one day. It's time to start advocating for a curriculum that teaches students to be good, upright students who can think for themselves without being swayed by emotion. What better place to find a framework than the McGuffey Readers, which are full of lessons vital not only for children, but for ourselves as well.
2022-04-29: JWR: How to Spot a Lefty, by Greg Crosby
To keep our sanity, we need to quickly and simply be able to tell the difference between normal people and Lefties. In the interest of happiness for all of us normal people, I have gone to the trouble of compiling a list of "tells" that will help you recognize the idiots within our midst in an instant. ...
2021-12-31: ZeroHedge: 2022, The Year of Breakdown, by Charles Hugh Smith
If we look at the fragility and instability of essential systems, it's clear that 2022 will be the year of breakdown. All systems are optimized to process specific inputs to generate specific outputs, at the expense of redundancy, resilience, reserves and adaptability. Systems are now so complex and opaque that they are in effect optimized to fail -- completely unprepared to deal with alternate realities.
2021-12-28: JWR: The (@#$%&!) Year We Just Lived Through, by Dennis Prager
I thought it would be worthwhile to review some of the most important observations I made over the course of an awful year 2021. I hope you agree, and wish you -- and our country -- a happier New Year.
2021-12-24: Parker Phonics: A Brief History of Reading Instruction
1800-1900: Most children learn to read using the "phonic" method (bottom-up) of mastering the elementary sounds of letters; 1930-1965: Whole Word becomes the dominant (top-down) method for teaching reading in the United States, and phonics are ignored; 1975-2000: The Whole Word (Look/Say) method is made even worse, morphing into the Whole Language (three-cueing) method.
2021-12-13: JWR: Goodbye Red Kettle: The Salvation Army goes woke, by Don Feder
In pushing white guilt, the Salvation Army is starting to resemble the NEA with CRT. Soon, its supporters will be forced to choose between their favorite charity and their country.
2021-11-25: WT: The Babylon Bee Guide to Wokeness -- book review
During my coming-of-age years, The National Lampoon was the intelligent, edgy, satirical publication of choice. Today, now of-age, my satire of choice is The Babylon Bee. The small swarm at the Bee knows how to sting the smug, sensitive, puerile Marxists right in their behind belief system.
2021-11-21: ZeroHedge: Have We Finally Reached Peak Davos?, by Tom Loungo
The Davos crowd's obsession with the COVID-9/11 jab may be finally meeting popular resistance. To even contemplate turning an entire country into a patchwork of leper colonies over a nasty cold is indicative of the sickest mind, to agree with doing so makes you a party to crimes against humanity, and to pull a paycheck to enforce it the very definition of evil itself.
2021-10-20: Converge Media: Wokeism - The New Religion of The West, by Max Funk
There are many names for what we currently find ourselves in; wokeness, political correctness, and cancel culture are some of them, but these only encapsulate a portion of the phenomenon. Cultural Marxism, neo-marxism, social justice, identity politics, and Critical Theory are broader descriptors. Here's a term that adequately captures the religiosity of the movement: wokeism.
2021-10-20: ZeroHedge: Software Ate the World and Now Has Indigestion, by Charles Hugh Smith
As for all those automated systems we have to navigate -- do any of them work so well that those profiting from them actually use them? Of course not.
2021-10-12: Epoch Times: 2018 Research Proposal Similar to C-19 Pandemic, by Jeff Carlson
A Proposal from EcoHealth Alliance head Peter Daszak, dated March 27, 2018, sets out the organization's plan to create entirely new coronaviruses through the synthetic combination of preexisting virus backbones. It describes how those viruses were going to be made more virulent in humans by the insertion of a furin cleavage site, a feature that distinguishes COVID-19 from all other SARS-related coronaviruses.
2021-09-19: Gatestone Inst: A Hinge Moment of History, by Mark Steyn
We're living in the early stages of a future that is the direct consequence of poor public policy over the last couple of generations. Western civilization is sliding off a cliff and most citizens of most Western nations are not even aware of it. I would love it if we would talk about something important.
2021-09-07: Reason: Loo and Behold, A First Amendment Toilet!, by Lenore Skenazy
"I have my First Amendment rights," says Hank Robar, the property owner who created a toilet garden to protest local officials.
2021-08-14: Epoch Times: Dear Next Generation: Pawpaw's Life Lessons, by P.J. Calhoun, Jr
My main goal was to teach my grandsons that you don't become successful in life by mistreating and misleading others. True success is achieved by living a principle-centered life. You are deceiving yourself if you think otherwise, and personal dishonesty has serious consequences. So here are my "Life Lessons" that I prepared only a few years ago.
2021-08-06: ZeroHedge: Neoliberalism Now Stripmining the Middle Class, by Charles Hugh Smith
Having run out of opportunities globally, America's Financial Elite has come home to stripmine the last available pool of wealth: America's middle class. Once a market has been de-regulated and opened to global capital, the decisive factor becomes the cost of borrowing money; the elite with 1% borrowing costs and can outbid the middle class at 4% for income producing assets.
2021-04-27: JWR: "Affluence + Secularism = Boredom = Leftism", by Dennis Prager
Most leftists come from the upper and upper-middle class; and nearly all leftists are irreligious people. These two facts produce a problem: Many people lack meaning in their lives, traditionally met by four things: religion, family, providing for oneself and one's family, and patriotism -- all of which are fading. And lack of meaning is another way of stating "boredom" -- a boredom of the soul.
2020-12-16: ZeroHedge: The COVID-19 Data Is A "Travesty", used to create fear and submission
The way the Covid-19 death data is recorded in many countries around the world has produced, and continues to produce, an inflated death toll. This inflated death toll has then been, and continues to be, used by fascist-style bureaucracies, in conjunction with scientific priesthoods, to terrify the general public into obedience.
2020-12-04: ZeroHedge: Former Chinese Communist Party Insider Breaks With Beijing, by Cai Xia
A Chinese Communist Party true believer, born and raised into a Communist military family, describes her career as a professor and cheerleader for the CCP movement. Her hopes were dashed on a trip to Spain, when she compared post-Franco Spain's experience to China's, now ruled by President-for-life Xi Jinping.
2020-11-13: ZeroHedge: Davos Crowd's "Great Reset" Vision Of The Future, by Colin Todhunter
The great reset entails a transformation of society resulting in permanent restrictions on fundamental liberties and mass surveillance as entire sectors are sacrificed to boost large corporations. The public will 'rent' everything they require: stripping the right of ownership under the guise of 'sustainable consumption' and 'saving the planet'.
2020-11-12: ZeroHedge: Do Lockdowns Prevent COVID Deaths?, by Raul Ilargi Meijer
Lockdowns are based on pretending we can make time stand still. But you can't force lockdowns, masks etc. onto people, without looking at what the consequences of that will be, because all things do not remain equal for 6-7 months. Maybe you should look for answers elsewhere, because the damage just goes on, economically, psychologically, physically.
2020-10-13: ZeroHedge: "Facts Do Not Matter" To The Covidian Cult, by CJ Hopkins
One of the hallmarks of totalitarianism is mass conformity to a psychotic official narrative, even a totally delusional official narrative that has little or no connection to reality and that is contradicted by a preponderance of facts. The phenomenon is observed in cults such as Nazism, the Manson family, Jim Jones' People's Temple, the Church of Scientology and now the Covidian Cult.
2020-09-29: Epoch Times: Directed Energy Weapons are a Near-Reality, by Simon Veazey
The military has been developing directed energy weapons of one kind or another since the 1960s -- but only now is the missile-zapping technology envisioned by President Ronald Reagan's Star Wars a near-reality.
2020-09-28: ZeroHedge: Harken, The Covidean Creed... -- religious satire, by Ian Jenkins
"We believe in one Virus, the SARS-COV-2, the Almighty, destroyer of heaven and earth..."
2020-09-22: Epoch Times: Let's Bring Back Chivalry, by Jeff Minick
Suzanne Venker writes that "chivalry is dead because women killed it," but then defends chivalry and urges women to bring it back if they wish to encourage the making of "mature, respectful, marriage-minded men." She adds: "Women have the power to turn it all around -- because they are the relationship navigators. Men only changed because women did. That's because men are born to please women."
2020-09-17: ZeroHedge: 12 Steps To Create Your Own Pandemic, by Nils Nilsen
Imagine that you had the resources and influence sufficient to create a global pandemic, what would you need to do? How would you get started? And how best to turn it to your advantage and boost your profits?
2020-09-15: ZeroHedge: "Smoking Gun" Evidence Published; COVID-19 Created In Lab
That Chinese virologist (MD, PhD) who fled the country, leaving her job at a prestigious Hong Kong university, who claimed COVID-19 was created by Chinese scientists in a lab, has tweeted a link to a paper she co-authored with three other Chinese scientists confirming this accusation.
2020-09-15: Epoch Times: Autonomy Necessary for Human Happiness, by Jen Maffessanti
Happiness cannot be engineered. Humans cannot have all -- or even a slim majority -- of their choices made for them and still be happy. Autonomy -- that is, freedom -- is necessary for human happiness. And while freedom is no guarantee of happiness, it is essential if we are ever to be able to find it on our own.
2020-08-29: ZeroHedge: The C-19 Scamdemic, Part 1: Path To A New World Order, by Iain Davis
Capitalism requires a reset because the model of closed shop crony capitalism, operated by the global parasite class for centuries, has reached the limits of growth. Therefore they need to create a new economic paradigm (the Great Reset) both to further centralise and consolidate their power and to fix their failing business model.
2020-08-25: Epoch Times: The Neglected Virtue of Manliness, by Jeff Minick
Being a man is tough these days. Becoming a man is even tougher, as some young men seem clueless about the meaning of manhood. There is an unbroken pedigree in the Western conception of what it means to be a man -- honor tempered by prudence, ambition tempered by compassion for the suffering and the oppressed, love restrained by delicacy and honor toward the beloved. We don't need to reinvent manliness. We need only to reclaim it.
2020-07-27: ZeroHedge: Time to Flip the C-19 Shelter-in-Place Narrative, by Jeffrey Tucker
Its time to flip the run-and-hide, shelter-in-place narrative. If we stay on the present course of hiding and futilely trying to suppress the virus, we will end making all of society poorer both materially and spiritually and also delivering a dangerous blow to our biological health.
2020-07-27: ZeroHedge: How A Society Unravels, by Ritesh Jain
In an interview with Edward Griffith in 1984, former KGB operative Yuri Bezmenov outlined the playbook of the Soviet Union and the staged manner in which a communist apparatus takes over a country: Phases 1) Demoralization; 2) Destabilization; 3) Crisis; 4) Normalization, the final stage is where the populace finally acquiesces and begins to assimilate communism.
2020-07-25: ZeroHedge: A 'Gets Woke, Goes Broke' After Canceling Live PD, by Andrea Widburg
Live PD was a valuable franchise, one that gave Americans a chance to see police doing their day-to-day work. On June 10, the show's producers, working with co-owners, Disney Media Networks and Hearst Communications, went woke and canceled the show. A&E's audience, ratings, and revenues have since plummeted.
2020-07-21: ZeroHedge: GloboCap Uber Alles -- satire, by CJ Hopkins
Is the "New Normal" paranoid and totalitarian enough for you? This is what you get when you mess with GloboCap. This is what voting for Trump, Brexit, and all the rest of that 'populist' nonsense gets you ... global pandemics, civil race wars, riots, lockdowns, economic depression, societal collapse, chaos, fear. Global Capitalism insists we start behaving and thinking as we're told.
2020-07-10: Fox News: Chinese virologist accuses Beijing of C-19 cover-up, flees Hong Kong
Li-Meng Yan told Fox News that she believes China knew about the coronavirus well before it claimed it did. She says her supervisors also ignored research she was doing that she believes could have saved lives. If she were still in China, she would be "disappeared".
2020-07-06: Epoch Times: What Parenting Style Works Best?, by Thomas Lickona
In the early 1960s, a University of California, Berkeley, psychologist named Diana Baumrind began a study: How does our parenting style affect our childrens' development of character and competence? Four categories: 1) Disengaged parents - neither demanding nor responsive; 2) Permissive parents - responsive, but undemanding; 3) Authoritarian parents - demanding, but unresponsive; 4) Authoritative parents - both demanding and responsive (the winning category).
2020-06-15: WT: New barbarians deny free speech to others and destroy historical artifacts
"Barbarians" are groups of people who engage in wanton destruction of civilized places and institutions. Currently they include polititians, street thugs, self-described intellectuals, and executives of media companies -- denying free speech by omission and deplatforming. Many of the new barbarians are extremely ignorant of history, and seek to erase symbols they seem to find offensive at the moment.
2020-04-15: Epoch Times: Manners vs Virtue, Manners, Courtesy, and Decorum, by Jeff Minick
Virtues exist outside the realm of the individual as broad governing principles based on morality, goodness, and what C.S. Lewis called in "The Abolition of Man" the "traditional moralities of East and West." Values are defined as "a person's principles or standards of behavior; one's judgment of what is important in life." This latter subjective practice has had adverse consequences for virtue, decorum, and manners.
2020-03-30: Epoch Times: Celebrating the West, by William Gairdner
I have previously written how modern multicultural and globalist policies have been undermining the deep-culture distinctiveness of the West. Now I want to celebrate some of the precious gifts of our civilization, without apology. Because no matter how you look at it, from ancient times until now -- shortcomings, mistakes, and disasters notwithstanding -- our system for producing human flourishing is plainly one of the most successful ever created.
2020-03-17: Epoch Times: When Wuhan Virus Departs, World Will Be Changed, by Michael Walsh
When the Wuhan Virus finally runs its course, a whole lot of things are going to be very, very different. Casualties include: 1) the European Union; 2) Open borders; 3) dependence on China; 4) "Climate change"; 5) Globalism and "free trade"; 6) the IRS and the income tax; 7) college and professional sports; 8) mass transit; 9) animal rights; 10) rule by judges; and most of all 11) the media.
2020-03-16: Intellectual Takeout: How C.S. Lewis Would Tell Us to Handle Coronavirus
Last week I saw a C.S. Lewis quote shared on social media. I'd seen this quote from his essay "On Living in an Atomic Age" before, but shrugged it off as a nice thought that didn't really apply any more. Never mind. Swap out "atomic bomb" for "coronavirus" and the relevance of the quote becomes quite clear.
2020-03-09: Epoch Times: Why Socialism Will Never Die and Plague Humanity Forever
Joseph Schumpeter, one of the brightest economists of the 20th century, allegedly said socialism will never die because it has three constituencies who will forever advocate for it -- victims of creative destruction, intellectuals, and bureaucrats.
2020-03-07: Epoch Times: Alena Pettitt, a Voice for Traditional Housewives, by C. Philipp
On her website, Pettitt writes: "It's OK to want to be a good wife. It's OK to want to make your husband happy, and it's definitely OK to stand up and preserve the sanctity of marriage. 1809, 1909, 1959, 2020 -- it's all the same. Women haven't changed -- society's narrative has, but they too often spin lies to make us feel bad about living 'differently' from the norm."
2020-02-27: Epoch Times: How to Excel at Parenting, by Barbara Danza
How to be a phenomenal parent: 1) Dedicate Yourself; 2) Bask in the Wonder; 3) Keep Things Simple; 4) Embrace Adventure; 5) Educate Your Children; 6) Recognize Your Reflection; 7) Take It Day by Day.
2020-02-20: Epoch Times: Why Principles Matter, by Lawrence W. Reed
In one form or another, I hear people suggest that an "open mind" is somehow superior to possessing an opinion or embracing a principle. The only times that's true, in my view, are when an opinion or a principle is knee-jerk, poorly considered, illogical, untrue, or unfounded.
2020-02-20: Epoch Times: Docs Decry Financial Pressures of Health Care, by Melissa Bailey
The current model of emergency care forces doctors to practice "fast and loose medicine". Patients get a battery of tests before a doctor even has time to hear their story or give them a proper exam. A growing number of physicians, nurses, social workers, and other clinicians are using the phrase "moral injury" to describe their inner struggles at work.
2020-02-17: Epoch Times: Social Conservatives and Tradition, by Harley Price
Most traditional social or moral arrangements were established in the mists of antiquity, but then only at the end of an earlier, protracted period of human experimentation and adaptation. A traditionalist is one who has the sense to recognize when the experiment has succeeded, and to stop, on the principle that there is nothing more mindless -- because it is insane -- than to go on experimenting for experiment's sake.
2020-02-13: Epoch Times: With SAS Ad, Globalism Turns to Self-Loathing, by Celia Farber
A commercial for Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) has caused an uproar on social media, causing thousands of Scandinavians to pledge never to fly with them again. Like the infamous toxic masculinity pre-Superbowl Gillette commercial, it seems to weaponize the "product" against the very people it would normally seek to seduce. Are commercials becoming vehicles that attack their customers, in the age of woke?
2020-01-29: Epoch Times: Positive Freedom Versus Negative Freedom, by Chris Erickson
True freedom is being able to live a life in which we are free to pursue the true, the good, and the beautiful. Having all exterior controls and restraints removed is not actual freedom, as nothing is truly being bestowed freely upon an individual. The truth is that so-called freedom from all constraints and limits isn't actually freedom, but rather an attractive invitation into chaos, destruction, and/or addiction.
2020-01-24: WT: Christianity Today doubles down condemning Trump defenders, by Everett Piper
After Mark Galli's rant against Trump in Dec. 2019, Scott McKnight, writing for the same magazine, doubled down in a Jan. 21, 2020 article, labeling as "statists" conservatives who believe in the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution. Have these people never heard of "psychological projection", accusing others of the very sins of which they, themselves, are most guilty?
2020-01-15: Epoch Times: Meg Meeker: Helping Girls Discover Their Real Worth, by C. Philipp
Kids have a hunger to know why they are here. "Even 8-year-old kids, 10-year-old kids know they're living on a fairly superficial level, and they want to go deeper. Parents are pretty good about teaching their daughters that you can be a really good soccer player, you can get really good grades, but girls aren't satisfied with that. They want to know, 'Why am I alive?'" -- Meg Meeker, pediatrician and best-selling author.
2020-01-09: Yahoo: 'Pre-school Picasso' shakes up German art world, by Kit Holden
Dubbed the "pre-school Picasso" by German media, Mikail Akar's paintings now sell for thousands of euros (dollars) to buyers from across the world. "At just seven years old, he is established in the art world. There is interest from Germany, France and the USA," his father and manager, Kerem Akar, told AFP.
2019-12-26: MIT Tech Review: Smartphones make for lousy college students, by Ron Srigley
"In their world I'm the distraction, not their phones or their social-media profiles or their networking. Yet for what I'm supposed to be doing -- educating and cultivating young hearts and minds -- the consequences are pretty dark."
2019-12-21: WaPo: Christianity Today took aim at Trump, but only hurt itself, by Hugh Hewett
I don't know soon-to-retire Mark Galli. But Christianity Today has suffered the same long, slow decline that has crippled "mainstream denominations", and perhaps the idea of putting on a show-stopping exit was just too tempting to pass up. But Galli should have done just that. The cost to this publication will be immense.
2019-12-13: Unherd.com: Is this the end for Labour?, by Paul Embert, trade unionist
Says the author: "Some of us had long warned that working-class voters across post-industrial and small-town Britain were becoming increasingly alienated from the party. But we were banging our heads against a brick wall." Will the message he relates be picked up on this side of the pond? Don't bet on it.
2019-12-13: WT: 'Bravo, Boris on U.K. election win!', by Lee Cohen
Thursday night, while we slept, our staunchest ally chose between two paths that couldn't be more divergent -- between capitalism and Marxism, between the people vs. the elite, between self-determination and self-conscious stagnation. Our destiny and the global order is affected by this choice. We can breathe a collective sigh of relief. Bravo, Boris!
2019-11-21: Epoch Times: The 10 Habits of Logical People, by Dan Lattier
It takes a certain mental discipline to think logically, but the effort is well worth it. The authentically logical person keeps his logic rooted in truth not verbal trickery.
2019-11-16: WT: Democracy paralyzed by elites in U.S. and U.K., by Jed Babbin
The United Kingdom is afflicted with "Brexit paralysis", whereby the ruling elite has chosen not to do what the voters asked them to do and has been unable to do virtually anything else. In America, Democrats and the "deep staters" drag us through round after round of attempts to oust President Trump, also against the will of the voters. How long that will continue will be decided on Dec. 12, 2019, and on Nov. 3, 2020.
2019-11-06: Daily Caller: Lettuce Pray: Climate Change, Neo-Paganism, and End Of The World
The climate change movement has become the "modern world's secular religion", declared Wall Street Journal columnist Gerard Baker recently. Climate cultists appropriate aspects of Christianity to call the world to repent for its "Original Sin of a carbon industrial revolution", wrote Baker. They have adopted the schema of the Christian eschaton, or end of the world.
2019-11-05: Epoch Times: Gratitude Versus Entitlement, by Paul Adams
We have much to be grateful for. Developing and practicing gratitude as a habit and outlook on life is important to our well-being and that of society. So why do we teach children and young people the opposite: an attitude of entitlement and grievance, of resentment and victimhood?
2019-10-22: Epoch Times: In Socialist Theocracy, Getting 'Woke' Brings Absolution
Socialism is very much a theocratic system. In its destruction of God, it aimed to replace God; and in its destruction of morals, it has looked to create a new morality. The statist theocracy now rules, and those who sit in its pews can preach to their masses about how they, too, were once lowly sinners in the ever-changing crimes of political correctness.
2019-10-18: WaPo: Americans embrace the wisdom of being 'nobody', by Arthur C. Brooks
People need to know that working to attain fame for its own sake is not normal at all. We should teach children that happiness is possible despite fame but never because of it; and that fame should be only a rare byproduct of good work. Most important, we should avoid leaders in politics and culture who have this pathological definition of personal success.
2019-10-13: WT: Millennials should practice what they preach, by Everett Piper
If you don't have your act together, stop deflecting. Change yourself before you try to change everyone else! ... Integrity assumes you actually care enough to practice what you preach. Until you realize this, no one will ever take you seriously. If you want to be treated like an adult, stop acting like an insolent child.
2019-10-11: Epoch Times: Have Our Elites Grown Tired of Traditional Democracy?, by Wm Brooks
The Magna Carta was signed by King John in 1215. But our political class appears to be growing tired of going to the common people for a mandate to govern. Concerned citizens are sensing what Polish philosopher and author Rysard Legutko has described as "the demon" in our democracy which has incited "totalitarian temptations" among our ruling elites.
2019-09-25: City Journal: Pittsburgh's Experiences in Urban Revitalization, by John Tierney
If you want to see how to revive a city -- and how not to -- go to Pittsburgh. No other modern American city has worked so hard for so long in so many ways to reinvent itself. Pittsburgh is currently attracting professionals of all ages who crave an affordable urban experience. The bad news is that they've brought their progressive politics with them.
2019-09-19: Epoch Times: The Poisoned Fruit of the Sexual Revolution, by Paul Adams
Shorn of identity rooted in family, young people adopted alternative nonfamily identities as ways of being -- defining the self in terms of combinations or "intersections" of race, sex, sexual appetite, and "gender" -- with some curious results.
2019-09-05: Tech News World: Amazon Testing Hand-Scanning Payment System, by Richard Adhikari
Amazon is testing scanners that can identify a human hand to use as a payment method for in-store purchases. And Fujitsu has demonstrated new biometric payment technology that scans the veins on customers' palms, patterns researchers ten years ago identified as unique to each person on earth.
2019-08-29: Ars Technica: Unix at 50: How this OS started from failure, by Richard Jensen
Unix, the operating system that in one derivative or another powers nearly all smartphones sold worldwide, was born 50 years ago from the failure of an ambitious project that involved titans like Bell Labs, GE, and MIT.
2019-08-01: Epoch Times: 'Critical Race Theory', 'Intersectionality' in Church?, by T. Loudon
When the Southern Baptists, the largest Protestant denomination in the country, endorse "critical race theory" (CRT), you know American Christianity has a Marxism problem. At the Southern Baptist national convention in Birmingham, Alabama, in June, a resolution on CRT and "intersectionality" gained passage with a strong majority.
2019-07-18: Daily Caller: Is Corporate America Selling Out Our Country?, by Tucker Carlson
Would American companies in a new globalized economy drop everything for their country like they did after Pearl Harbor? Do American companies even consider themselves American anymore? Google's recent siding with communist China over the U.S. military leaves serious reason for doubt.
2019-07-10: Epoch Times: Bukovsky, on Soviet Crimes and Western Complicity, by Celia Farber
Now and then a book comes along that renders all that have come before it on the same subject superfluous. If the subject is how exactly we (the "West") were enmeshed with our supposed enemy, the USSR, during the Cold War, this is the only book you truly need to read: "Judgment in Moscow: Soviet Crimes and Western Complicity," by Vladimir Bukovsky, published for the first time in English.
2019-06-23: WT: Conservatives are actually pro-science, Liberals are not!, by Everett Piper
The latest "Nation's Report Card" on America's schools is out. Private schools -- which are mostly religious -- outperform their public-school counterparts in science scores in almost every subcategory, including physical science, life science and earth science. This is not surprising. After all, it is conservatives who believe in reason, rationality, and the reality of the tangible, the physical and the material. Today's progressives argue for the opposite.
2019-06-20: Epoch Times: Democracy Against the Family, by William Gairdner
Democracies originate as three tiers: 1) the state (top), 2) cultural groups including the family who impart civility (middle), and 3) autonomous individuals who rely on self control (bottom). Democracies then proceed to gradually weaken the civilizing middle level to the point where there is only the state and an uncivil permanent underclass -- i.e. Socialism.
2019-06-19: Epoch Times: Orwell on How Socialists Alter Language to Alter History
George Orwell wrote that through alterating the past, and by portraying any remembered history as evil, socialist regimes could render classic texts such as the U.S. Declaration of Independence incomprehensible in their original context. People then would be incapable of understanding the original intentions behind them. (Gee, sounds familiar!)
2019-06-12: JWR: Why are the Western middle classes so angry?, by Victor Davis Hanson
What accounts for Trump, Brexit, "yellow vests" and other anti-EU themes? Put simply, the middle classes are revolting against Western managerial elites. The latter group includes professional politicians, entrenched bureaucrats, condescending academics, corporate phonies and propagandistic journalists.
2019-05-19: WaPo: Why I'm rooting for James Holzhauer on 'Jeopardy', by Ken Jennings
When James Holzhauer returns to "Jeopardy!" Monday night after a two-week hiatus, he will already be the second-longest-running contestant in the venerable quiz show's history. It's impossible to overstate what a statistical outlier Holzhauer has been during his "Jeopardy!" rampage -- even for a fellow "Jeopardy!" outlier like me.
2019-05-19: Epoch Times: 'ThoughtCrime' Is Becoming a Reality, by Joshua Philipp
Cases are emerging in several Western countries where people are getting visits from the police to question them on their political views, and some have been arrested. Condemning state policies has become synonymous with a double standard on "intolerance", which is punishable by the state. This is precisely what George Orwell warned about in his book "1984".
2019-05-16: The Atlantic: The Peculiar Blindness of Experts, by David Epstein
The track record of expert forecasters -- in science, in economics, in politics -- is dismal. Reliable insight into the future is possible, however. It just requires a style of thinking that's uncommon among experts who are certain that their deep knowledge has granted them a special grasp of what is to come.
2019-05-16: CFACT: Fear, loathing, intolerance, and the toxic Green agenda, by Paul Driessen
Today's Green New Dealers and their allies have mapped out their own totalitarian strategy in the form of fascism, a political system in which authoritarian government does not own businesses and industries, but strictly regulates and controls their actions, output and rights, while constraining and suppressing citizens and their thought, speech and access to information.
2019-04-16: Epoch Times: The Three Meta-Errors That Pervade Progressivism, by Mark Hendrickson
Conservatives have so many policy disagreements with progressives that it's hard to keep track of them all. However, they all stem from three fundamental errors -- the meta-errors of progressives and progressivism: 1) an unjustified faith in government competence, 2) an irrational belief in the power of human will, and 3) what I call "the tyranny of good intentions".
2019-04-15: Epoch Times: Emotion Over Logic: The Legacy Media Tool for Narrative Control
Psychological warfare has three main tools: disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda. With today's socialist movements, and in coverage by legacy news outlets, we can see all these elements at play. Their collective result is that many people are unable to think rationally, and, instead, react to surface issues along set partisan lines.
2019-04-09: Epoch Times: You Can't Have Socialism Without State Tyranny, by Joshua Philipp
When people talk about socialized health care, free education, and other programs, they often believe these things are meant to care for society. Yet these programs can't exist without a system to enforce it -- and it's in the enforcement of these policies that socialism can't exist without tyranny.
2019-04-04: FC: Oceanix proposes to build modular, floating cities, by Katharine Schwab
Floating cities are not new -- the Aztecs, Buckminster Fuller, and Peter Thiel have all considered the idea. Now Oceanix hopes to engineer a floating city, made up of hexagonal islands, that could theoretically be duplicated endlessly. The system would grow its own food and be entirely closed loop.
2019-03-21: Epoch Times: The Fatal Flaw of Socialized Health Care, by Trevor Loudon
In a socialized system, you must meet certain conditions to get treatment for yourself or your family. You will preferably be young and productive, and friendly to the powers that be. As long as you don't get old, or too individualistic, you may get the treatments you need -- if you don't die waiting. You don't need "death panels" in a socialized system. The rationing is built into the system.
2019-03-14: Epoch Times: Men Women, Embracing Our Differences -- Series of Articles
2019-02-28: Epoch Times: The Plight of the Liberal, by Mark Bauerlein
In a world of political correctness, which orients facts and values toward the left, it's harder to be a liberal than it is to be a conservative. Conservatives don't have to prove ourselves worthy the way liberals do. Liberals don't have such solid convictions; they must only toe the line of political correctness, but the line keeps moving.
2019-02-16: Epoch Times: The Emasculation of Men Is Doing Society No Favors, by Ryan Moffatt
There was a time in Western society when men were expected to adhere to a set of heroic values -- to protect, provide, and lead. This was the measure of a man. Such attributes gave each man something to aim for. But in this time of moral relativism, there is no North Star for men to chart their course. As a result of decades of gradual emasculation, men no longer know what manhood means.
2019-01-xx: ASOR: Making Bibles in Early America, by Seth Perry
Printers made a lot of bibles in the early United States. These were mostly in English, though the first American-made bible was in a Native American language, and German, Spanish, French, and Hebrew bibles, among others, had been printed in the New World by the early nineteenth century.
2019-01-23: RT: Microsoft to provide "fake news" filter in mobile browser -- in reverse?
Users of Microsoft's Edge mobile browser will have the option of flagging what the company considers "unreliable" news sites. So left-leaning sites like CNN, Buzzfeed, and The Washington Post get green-lighted, while right-leaning sites like Daily Mail, Breitbart, and the Drudge Report get red-lighted. (Gee, whodathought!)
2019-01-17: Crisis Mag: Time for Some Trust-Busting?, by William Kilpatrick
Which organizations are most likely to advance the cause of Islamic dominance? How about companies such as Mastercard, Discover, PayPal, Twitter, Facebook, and Google. Recently, the media giants have been working with the financial giants to make life miserable for critics of Islam.
2019-01-16: Daily Caller: The word "family" triggers meltdown at Google, by Peter Hanson
Google employees melted down after the word "family" was used in a company presentation. Some were upset that the word was used in a way that links families with children, which they argued was homophobic.
2019-01-15: BPR: New 'toxic masculinity' ad has Gillette losing big-time, by Vivek Saxena
Gillette faces a growing tide of backlash over a new ad published this week that appears to smear all men as predatory bullies suffering from so-called "toxic masculinity". The ad reeks of Marxist-styled "social justice" concepts, and initial reactions suggest the brand's latest campaign will backfire big-time.
2019-01-02: Epoch Times: Why Is Communism Evil?, by Trevor Loudon
Communism is not evil because of the estimated 85 million to 100 million deaths caused by Marxist-Leninist regimes. This is a symtom -- not the cause -- of the inherent evil of communism. The reason that communism is the greatest evil is simple: Communism is the greatest enemy of personal responsibility ever invented.
2018-12-27: NYT: Inside Facebook's Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech, by Max Fisher
Under fire for stirring up distrust and violence, the social network has vowed to police its users. But leaked documents raise serious questions about its approach.
2018-12-19: Epoch Times: Google Distributes Chinese Surveillance Technology, by Rex Lee
Companies such as Google are enabling content developers, including nation-state companies from China, to indiscriminately collect, use, share, sell, purchase, and aggregate a product-user's digital DNA for financial gain, including telecom-related confidential and protected digital DNA. The U.S. government has been asleep on this issue, so if you use a smartphone, you have absolutely no privacy.
2018-12-14: Ars Technica: Don't buy a 5G smartphone just yet, by Ron Amadeo
For 5G mmWave in 2019, we're going to get thicker, hotter, more complicated phones that use more energy and cost more money. It's undeniable that first-gen 5G hardware is going to be inferior to more mature 4G designs. With 5G networks only in their infancy and a supposed $200-$300 premium for 5G-compatible phones, this really doesn't seem worth it for consumers.
2018-12-11: Epoch Times: The Problem With Experts, by Mark Hendrickson
All experts are expert about only one thing: the past. Expertise is confined to what is already known (and even then, what is "known" isn't always true). Nobody is an expert about the future, for the obvious reason that the future is as yet unknown.
2018-09-29: Fast Company: Tim Berners-Lee plans to upend World Wide Web, by Katrina Brooker
For years now, Berners-Lee and other internet activists have been dreaming of a digital utopia where individuals control their own data and the internet remains free and open. But for Berners-Lee, the time for dreaming is over.
2018-09-28: The Conversation: 50 years of the Boeing 747, by Janet Bednarek
The 747 was -- and is -- probably the most easily recognizable jet airliner. While most people would have a hard time distinguishing between a Boeing 707 and a DC-8, the 747's large size and distinctive "hump" at the front make it unmistakable. While U.S. airlines stopped flying 747s in 2017, the aircraft may still have a long life as a carrier of freight.
2018-09-25: Epoch Times: Postmodernism - How Nihilism Consumed the Left, by Cid Lazarou
We live in an era of pessimism and nihilism, when hope and purpose have been stripped from existence. What remains is an ugly husk of self-hatred that consumes society from within, referred to as postmodernism. Cultural Marxism -- the use of critical and literary theory to deconstruct the West -- is part of that, turning everything about Western culture and identity into oppression and bigotry.
2018-09-21: The Intercept: Google Suppresses Memo on Plans to Closely Track Chinese Users
Google bosses have forced employees to delete a confidential memo circulating inside the company that revealed explosive details about a plan to launch a censored search engine in China. Codenamed Dragonfly, the search system would require users to log in to perform searches, track their location, and share the resulting history with a Chinese partner who would have "unilateral access" to the data.
2018-09-14: Weekly Standard: Catholic Church Is Breaking Apart. Here's Why., by J. V. Last
Even though the radical elements within the church were a small and aging minority, the progressives realized that the only person who really matters is the pope. That's why they organized to get Francis elected. So you have a "Deep State" within the Catholic hierarchy seeking to dismantle the Church's raison d'être, and to ensure a like-minded successor to Francis.
2018-09-12: Climate Depot: USA Is Now The Largest Global Crude Oil Producer
The United States likely surpassed Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world's largest crude oil producer earlier this year, based on preliminary estimates in EIA's Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO).
2018-08-29: Guardian: Meet the teens who refuse to use social media, by Sirin Kale
While generation Z has grown up online, a surprising number suddenly are turning their backs on Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat. Isabelle, an 18-year-old student from Bedfordshire, turned against social media when her classmates became zombified.
2018-08-27: Epoch Times: Why Purpose Might Be a Better Goal Than Happiness, by Iza Kavadzija
Happiness is often taken as an important societal goal by national governments. But the term is vague and has different meanings depending on the culture. A more fungible value might be gained from the Japanese word "ikigai", often translated as: "that which makes life worth living." It means having a purpose in life.
2018-08-17: JWR: Fear and Loathing of Jordan Peterson, by Suzanne Fields
Jordan Peterson is a Canadian psychologist and "public intellectual" who writes with fresh insight into the nature of the male animal. Depending on who you ask, he's the archetypal victim or brainy hero of these polarized times when an innocent conversation between a man and a woman can explode with awesome effect and considerable collateral damage.
2018-07-29: Daily Caller: Why the West Hates Itself, by Nirmal Dass
Why does a civilization, providing peace, stability, prosperity and unimagined freedom to its inhabitants turn to self-hatred? Why do those who richly enjoy the fruits of the West, also agree to abhor it?
2018-07-24: WT: The subtle rise of authoritarians, by Frank V. Vernuccio Jr.
How establishment elitists allied with the Left oppose middle-class interests ... The dramatic weakening of the middle class, which consistently occurs in socialist nations (the latest being Venezuela) is seen as an acceptable, indeed, even welcomed, byproduct of the policies of the globalists.
2018-07-11: Epoch Times: Chaos and Anarchy - Tools of Communist Subversion, by Joshua Philipp
There are groups in the United States (eg: Antifa) and other parts of the world that are actively trying to incite chaos, whether through the advocacy of anarchy or through subversive movements meant to destabilize societies. Communist subversion holds that society must first be destabilized and brought to a state of crisis before it can be "normalized" under the new system.
2018-06-22: Newsweek: Why Millennials are Falling Behind, by Ben Shapiro
According to a British study, millennials lack appropriate skills and qualifications, personal connections, financial and practical support, and emotional support. This is a social and cultural problem. Lack of family and support structures have led to the destruction of the social fabric necessary to undergirding a stronger civil society. Lack of cultural focus on meritocracy and effort have led to a decline in performance, and thus in health.
2018-06-17: WT: The despair of Anthony Bourdain, by Everett Piper
Lewis, Chesterton, and Colson all warned of this brave, new world where material comforts are all that matter; a world where claims of moral truth are considered suspect; a world where we should "eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we may die". Little is left for us at the end of days but to join with Anthony Bourdain and others and conclude, "suicide is painless".
2018-06-17: WT: The discontent of civilization, by Peter Morici
Developed societies are having too few babies for long-term survival. Women need to again find satisfaction in having more that two children, without expecting them all to go to Harvard. The proposition that three children is the ideal is social dynamite no politician wants to touch, but in the end civilization needs more babies to survive.
2018-05-14: Medium.com: Why Blockchain is Hard, by Jimmy Song
The hype around blockchain is massive. To hear the blockchain hype train tell it, blockchain will now: 1) Solve income inequality, 2) Make all data secure forever, 3) Make everything much more efficient and trustless, 4) Save dying babies. What the heck is a blockchain, anyway? And can it really do all these things? Can blockchain bring something amazing to industries as diverse as health care, finance, supply chain management and music rights?
2018-04-21: Epoch Times: Blockchain, Solution in Search of a Problem?, by Christopher Whalen
Blockchain technology has been described as being as transformative as the internet itself, but so far real progress is lacking and the headwinds are getting stiffer. Blockchain seems to violate the Three Laws of Silicon Valley -- cheaper, better, faster -- for the adoption of a new technology.
2018-04-05: Epoch Times: The Unseen War on Your Mind, by Joshua Philipp
Are our thoughts really our own? What concepts shape them? Where do these concepts come from? Today, influencing the human psyche has been broken down into a science, and many groups -- including governments, businesses, special interest groups, and subversive movements -- are using carefully crafted strategies designed to alter perceptions in order to further their goals. Through their collective impact, an unseen war is being waged on the mind of each person. To see through this narrative illusion, it's imperative to understand the tools in play.
2018-01-27: USSA News: Study rates Conservatives more attractive than Liberals
According to a new study, attractive people are more likely to support right-wing parties because they are stronger and more successful than those who identify as Liberals. They surmise that hot people lean towards the right because they grow to develop a so-called "blind spot" that leads them to not see the need for more government support or aid in society, which is a core Liberal value.
2018-01-18: JWR: The Left's nostalgia problem, by George Will
Is there anything more depressing than a cheerful liberal? The question is prompted by one such, historian David Goldfield, who has written a large-hearted book explaining that America's problems would yield to government's deft ameliorating touch if Americans would just rekindle their enthusiasm for it.
2018-01-04: AP: Who's affected by computer chip security flaw, by Matt O'Brien
Technology companies are scrambling to fix serious security flaws affecting computer processors built by Intel and other chipmakers and found in many of the world's personal computers and smartphones.
2017-12-xx: IMPRIMUS: Churchill's Three Lessons of Statesmanship, by Larry P. Arnn
Imprimis lecture by Larry P. Arnn, President of Hillsdale College
2017-12-25: RT: Sign a contract before sex? Political correctness run amok, by Frank May
In the West, at least, everyone has become massively aware of the extent of coercion and exploitation in sexual relations. But bear in mind that millions of people on a daily basis flirt and play the game of seduction, with the clear aim of finding a partner for making love. The result of the modern Western culture is that both sexes are expected to play an active role in this game.
2017-12-20: Daily Mail: Robot with AI knows when you're lying, by Shivali Best
The system, called DARE, was trained by watching 15 videos of people in court. It was trained recognised five expressions that indicate someone is lying -- frowning, raised eyebrows, lips turning up, lips protruded and head tilt. In a final test, the system performed with 92 per cent accuracy. The researchers describe this performance as 'significantly better' than humans.
2017-12-11: Verge: Former FB exec says social media ripping apart society, by James Vincent
Another former Facebook executive has spoken out about the harm the social network is doing to civil society around the world. Chamath Palihapitiya's criticisms were aimed not only at Facebook, but the wider online ecosystem. "The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we've created are destroying how society works," he said.
2017-12-06: Caltech: The World's Smallest Mona Lisa, by Lori Dajose
In 2006, Caltech's Paul Rothemund developed a method to fold a long strand of DNA into a prescribed shape. Dubbed DNA origami, the technique enabled scientists to create self-assembling DNA structures that could carry any specified pattern, such as a 100-nanometer-wide smiley face. Caltech scientists have now expanded this method into large arrays with entirely customizable patterns, creating a sort of canvas that can display any image, including Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.
2017-11-14: WT: Teen suicides rise with smartphone use, by Laura Kelly
A study shows that suicide rates among teenagers have risen along with ownership of smartphones and use of social media, suggesting a disturbing link between technology and teen harm. ... One high school student commented, "I want to talk to my friends at lunch, but they're all on their phones."
2017-11-09: Axios: Sean Parker unloads on Facebook "exploiting" human weakness, by Mike Allen
Sean Parker, the founding president of Facebook, gave me a candid insider's look at how social networks purposely hook and potentially hurt our brains. ... "it literally changes your relationship with society, with each other ... It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains."
2017-10-25: NYT: The Battle of Brains vs. Brawn, by Gretchen Reynolds
A remarkable new study of how the human body prioritizes its inner workings found that if you intensely think at the same time as you intensely exercise, your performance in both thinking and moving can worsen. But your muscles' performance will decline much more than your brain's will, the study found.
2017-10-25: Ars Technica: Colliding neutron stars support dark matter theory, by Chris Lee
Recently, scientists detected two neutron stars spiraling into each other and merging, releasing a huge amount of energy as both light and gravitational waves. The time difference between the arrival of the gravitational waves and the light was nearly zero, which virtually kills the there-is-no-dark-matter MOND gravitational theory.
2017-10-17: BW: One Scientist's Marathon Quest for the Exercise Pill, by Adam Piore
A decade after a tantalizing breakthrough, a biology pioneer believes he's much closer to a fat-burning, muscle-growing drug that won't, uh, give you cancer.
2017-10-17: The Subversionist: The New 95 [Theses], by Mike Gibson of Peter Thiel's 1517 Fund
Martin Luther nailed his theses to a church door 500 years ago on October 31st. With your help, we are going to nail ours -- ok, fine -- tape ours to the doors of universities and schools across the country to mark the occasion.
2017-10-15: Daily Mail: Thomas the Tank Engine to become gender-balanced, by Stewart Paterson
In the spirit of Political Correctness, an overhaul of Thomas the Tank Engine will see two male engines turfed out to make way for female characters. Mattel, the US toy giant that owns rights to the much-loved show, collaborated with the United Nations to help meet the organization's "Sustainable Development Goals".
2017-09-25: WT: The steps from freedom to Socialism, by Richard Rahn
State socialism remains attractive to those who have never studied its failure everywhere. Their takeover playbook remains the same: 1) Deny free speech to others (today's colleges); 2) Take control of education and dumb down the curriculum (done); 3) stamp out any opposition press; 4) deny freedom of assembly and right to own guns; 5) nationalize businesses or regulate to such an extent that they become agents of the state.
2017-08-24: Telegraph: 3,700-year-old Babylonian tablet remaps math history, by Sarah Knapton
A 3,700-year-old clay tablet has proven that the Babylonians developed trigonometry 1,500 years before the Greeks and were using a sophisticated method of mathematics which could change how we calculate today.
2017-08-19: Jacobin Mag: Richard Florida's Re-urbanization Reconsidered, by Sam Wetherell
If you live in an urban center in North America, the United Kingdom, or Australia, you are living in Richard Florida's world. Fifteen years ago, he argued that an influx of the "creative class" would launch humanity into a new phase of prosperity. Instead, the places became unaffordable and the middle class disappeared, leaving even greater structural problems.
2017-07-31: Daily Caller: George Soros, the 'Anti-Fascist' Fascist, by Dinesh D'Souza
The so-called "antifascist" movement in America today bears a strange resemblance to the very fascism it purports to combat -- witness masked Antifa protesters in black, carrying weapons, disrupting public events and blocking speakers from campus. The resemblance can be seen in some little-known aspects of one of Antifa's main financial sponsors, George Soros.
2017-07-11: WT: The values of the West ARE the best, by Clifford D. May
Trump's campaign for the survival of Western civilization drives the so-called 'progressives' crazy. But Ronald Reagan warned that "freedom is never more than one generation from extinction." He understood, and he wanted others to understand, that liberty is not an entitlement. It's a rare and precious commodity that "must be fought for."
2017-07-06: JWR: The sequence to success, by George Will
The success sequence is this: First get at least a high school diploma, then get a job, then get married, and only then have children. For older millennials ages 28 to 34, it's been found that only 3 percent who follow this sequence are poor. But some of the intelligentsia see this success sequence as middle-class norms to be disparaged for being middle-class norms.
2017-07-06: Crisis Mag: Disturbing Portrait of Present-Day American Left, by Stephen Krason
I've argued in previous columns that at bottom the problem of the left is a lack of integrity, inconsistencies in its positions, avoiding debate by simply demonizing its opponents, and its roiling of American politics. The reason is its unbending attachment to ideology. What would a fuller picture of the left look like and how is it put on display in current controversies?
2017-07-03: Epoch Times: Reclaiming Our History to Mend Our Culture, by Sharon Kilarski
Historian and educator Jason Goetz looks to the classics as a means for our culture to survive. As author of two sets of histories, Goetz hopes his works will reinvigorate high school history classes and better prepare the next generation. This is crucial, Goetz believes, because the model for how we educate is broken. (See
2017-07-03: WT: Fourth of July 100 years ago made familiar headlines, by Nicole Ault
Among the big stories of the day: The Senators took a doubleheader from the Yankees at the Polo Grounds. The president took a sail on a yacht. Race riots raged in East St. Louis. Congress debated a tax bill but went on holiday before acting. Politicians gave speeches in various corners of the country with predictably patriotic rhetoric.
2017-07-03: WT: Sanders, wife accused of shady financial dealings, by Seth McLaughlin
The Vermont power couple has become the focus of a federal investigation into whether Jane O'Meara Sanders committed bank fraud as president of Burlington College and whether Mr. Sanders' office played a role. The press and many of Mr. Sanders' former liberal allies have gone silent.
2017-06-28: ReasonTV: People Will Die!, by Remy Munasifi (video 1:55)
ReasonTV artist Remy Munasifi on Wednesday released this new song parody that tallied over 40,000 views in less than 24 hours on YouTube. The video serves as the libertarian organization's response to lawmakers who use red herrings, appeals to emotion, and other logical fallacies to demonize opponents.
2017-06-26: UK Sun: Meet 'the most armed man in America', by Jon Lockett
Mel Bernstein estimates that his military collection in Colorado is worth millions. Known as the Dragon Man, he has earned the title as 'the most armed man in the US' and has a frightening 3,000 weapons in his collection -- and that doesn't include the tanks.
2017-06-24: WT: A guidebook for Christians experiencing cultural vertigo -- Book review
In his latest book, "Strangers in a Strange Land: Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World," Archbishop Charles J. Chaput tackles the question vexing so many Christians today: In a culture increasingly hostile to the religion that nourished its roots, should Christians retreat or engage? Archbishop Chaput's response is unambiguous: engage, with vigor.
2017-05-24: Epoch Times: The Dark Origins of Communism: Part 1, 2, and 3, by Joshua Philipp
Most people think communism originated with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. However, Marxists point to François-Noël "Gracchus" Babeuf as the first revolutionary communist. Active during the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, Babeuf's vision was to eliminate money and force people to hand over all fruits of their labor to a 'common storehouse'.
2017-05-24: Epoch Times: Insects Are Making Their Way Into the American Diet, by Emel Akan
Investors are betting millions on the potential of crickets as a new protein source. Crickets are 65 percent protein by dry weight, which means they stack up well against traditional protein sources like beef, chicken, and eggs. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says that crickets are 12 times more efficient to raise than cattle, requiring minimal feed, water, and space.
2017-05-22: Ars Technica: 'Emergent gravity' theory offers alternative to 'dark matter'
A Dutch physicist re-derives Einstein's equations from the thermodynamics of the space, getting general relativity plus an additional term, which may replace the theory of dark matter. Other physicists are challenged to refine his work and see if the unsatisfying concept of dark matter can be displaced.
2017-04-13: Epoch Times: The Somewheres vs the Anywheres -- Book review, by Simon Veazey
Author David Goodhart says society has increasingly been shaped by a group of people whose identity and self-worth is not tied to place, but rather to their achievements and position: the Anywheres. That domination is now being challenged by the Somewheres: people whose identity and worth is rooted in place and attachment to a group.
2017-04-01: JHU Mag: The internet of bad things, by Jenna McLaughlin
Computer code is in everything. Everything is connected. And that's the problem.
2017-03-30: FCTA: An online replacement for the Patient Intake clipboard form, by David Swink
After years of doctors and dentists using computer-based EMRs, it's surprising that the dreaded clipboard is still being used to collect patient information. And periodically the patient is asked to fill out the form again -- from scratch. This article demonstrates how a web-based alternative could benefit doctor and patient alike.
2017-03-23: TIME: The Home of the Future, by Karl Vick
Luckily for a nation of undersavers, a trailer park turns out to be a superb place to grow old in. Neighbors are close and look after one another. Asphalt paths invite strolling. The cribbage tourneys, bingo and potluck dinners that cram shift loneliness from a default of old age to a conscious decision. And no stairs!
2017-03-09: Examiner: The upsides and downsides to eliminating paper money, by Kevin Cochrane
There is an effort gaining momentum to limit, or even abolish, physical money. There are some very positive upsides, but there are also some very disturbing downsides too, especially privacy.
2017-03-09: American Mirror: Obama's two birth certificates, by Kyle Olson
An Obama has joined the birther movement. Malik Obama, Barack Obama's half-brother, tweeted image of what appears to be Barack's birth certificate. Except it's not from Hawaii, but rather Kenya.
2017-03-02: JWR: The decline and fall of the American elite, by Victor Davis Hanson
Establishment furor over the six-week-old Trump administration is growing. Mr. Trump is in a virtual war with the mainstream global media, the entrenched so-called "deep state", the Democratic Party establishment, progressive activists, and many in the Republican Party as well. But who, exactly, makes up these disgruntled elite classes?
2017-02-xx: FCTA: Play notes and chords on your computer, by David Swink
Have some fun with this, and perhaps provide some feedback and we'll make it better.
2017-02-22: CNS News: Georgetown University OK with Slavery and Rape, by Bill Donohue
Two weeks ago, Jonathan Brown, a professor from Georgetown University publicly rose to the defense of slavery and rape, with barely a peep from the media. Brown, a convert to Islam, holds an endowed chair in Islamic studies at Georgetown. (The university received $20 million from Saudi Arabia 12 years ago to fund the Center run by Brown.)
2017-02-17: Epoch Times: Communism - The Dead-End Path, by Joshua Philipp John Nania
What Marx and Engels set forth in "The Communist Manifesto" was an ideology based on struggle that "abolishes all religion, and all morality." They regarded their beliefs as being absolute -- the end of human progress -- and set forth a proposal that all other beliefs should be destroyed through violent revolution. (Similar to Islam!)
2017-02-10: Epoch Times: The Myth of Multitasking, by Conan Milner
Multitasking is like a trick we play on ourselves - because we're juggling more tasks, it feels like we're getting more done. But experts say the opposite is true. According to the American Psychological Association, multitasking can waste "as much as 40 percent of someone's productive time."
2017-02-10: Epoch Times: Is Central Banking a Capitalist or Communist Concept?, by V. Schmid
Central banks look capitalist on the surface, but have their roots in communist literature. The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to "coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin". The Communist Manifesto calls for the "Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly."
2017-02-09: Times Dispatch: Time to license guns - for journalists -- Editorial
The ignorance [of journalists] is embarrassing, but it does make the media's support for gun control a tad more explicable: People fear what they don't understand.
2017-01-26: Epoch Times: The Danger of Political Labels, by Joshua Phillip
There is now a prevailing method of argument -- "critical theory" -- that replaces discussion and debate with personal attacks. At its root is the same philosophy used by totalitarian systems and leaders over the 20th century.
2017-01-19: Fx Free Citizen: Metro Man Meets Alpha Man, by Michael Giere
Masculinity has been so degraded and so vilified in the last four decades that it is like a cold blast of arctic air to see men take the national stage who are emotionally and intellectually -- men. They act like men and they talk like men, and their mere presence causes panic with the well-tailored metro men around Capitol Hill and Washington's prestigious think tanks.
2017-01-18: Ars Technica: New ideas on gravity would vanquish dark matter, by Chris Lee
Dark matter is the current theory in vogue to match our understanding of gravity to the observed expansion of the Universe. But Erik Verlinde, a Dutch theoretical physicist, offers an alternative theory using some of the same tools used to examine quantum information and black holes on the Universe as a whole.
2016-12-28: BEST video compilation of 'Donald Trump WILL NEVER BE PRESIDENT' proclamations
2016-12-21: Epoch Times: Are High-Tech Devices Harming Our Children?, by Barbara Danza
Certainly, we can look at the significant advances in technology of the past decade or two and see the positive aspects. But the negative aspects of this now ubiquitous technology are also becoming increasingly apparent -- especially when it comes to children. But what it's really robbing children of is their childhood.
2016-12-13: WT: Wash Post's mad search for pro-Trump columnists, by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
Over the weekend some pathetic wretch filed a column in The Washington Post lamenting that after an extensive search of the newspapers of this great country he could hardly find any pro-Trump columnists -- not even among the 'alt-right' with whom The Post has become so familiar during this election year. Apparently, the pro-Trumpers are nowhere to be found.
2016-10-09: Patch: Here's How to Get Rid of Stink Bugs, by Mary Ann Barton
Watch Virginia Tech video here for easy way to trap 'em (eliminated 14 times more stink bugs than store-bought traps that cost up to $50).
2016-10-05: Telegraph: Luxury travel on the Boeing 787 Dreamjet, by John O'Ceallaigh
Ordinarily Boeing 787 Dreamliners serve as commercial aircraft that carry between 240 and 335 passengers, but in a world first, one of the planes has been transformed into a 40-passenger private jet so spacious and well-equipped that it resembles an airborne penthouse apartment.
2016-09-14: AFP: Sexploits of Diego the Tortoise save Galapagos species, by S.P. Silva
He's over 100 years old, but his sex life is the stuff of legend. Diego the Tortoise is quite the ladies' man, and his exploits have helped save his species from extinction. (Tough work, but some tortoise has to do it.)
2016-09-14: Epoch Times: China Could Control Global Internet After Oct. 1, by Joshua Philipp
Chinese officials have been very candid about their intentions to push CCP law onto the internet. The coming out party for this effort was the 2014 World Internet Conference, which followed upon the U.S. announcement that it would step back from internet governance. The CCP wants to create a "common code of rules" for the internet.
2016-09-01: JWR: The more things change, the more they actually don't, by Victor Davis Hanson
America and the rest of the world have made enormous progress in technology, science and social relations. But beneath the veneer of 2016, human nature remains the same, and life often operates on principles similar to those from a half-century ago -- and even before that.
2016-08-25: JWR: Diversity is history's pathway to chaos, by Victor Davis Hanson
The Roman Empire worked as long as Iberians, Greeks, Jews, Gauls and myriad other African, Asian and European communities spoke Latin, cherished habeas corpus and saw being Roman as preferable to identifying with their own particular tribe. By the fifth century, diversity had won out but would soon prove a fatal liability.
2016-08-25: BW: This Is Your Company on Blockchain, by Peter Coy & Olga Kharif
The poetic vision of a blockchain society is a flock of starlings at dusk: decentralized yet perfectly coordinated. Blockchain, in this vision, could replace gobs of bankers, accountants, and lawyers, as well as escrow accounts, insurance, and everything else that society invented pre-21st century to verify payments and the performance of contracts.
2016-07-29: Epoch Times: Middle-Class Backlash Threatens Globalization, by Matthew Little
A populist sentiment sweeping the world is taking aim at the global economic order set by the United States in the decades following World War II. Rising inequality, political polarization, and a growing belief that governments serve the monied elite are destroying the trust and cohesion that healthy societies are built on.
2016-07-28: Ars Technica: Apollo astronauts dying of heart disease 4-5X faster than others
Apollo astronauts who have left the protective magnetosphere of mother Earth appear to be dying of cardiovascular disease at a far higher rate than their counterparts -- both those that have stayed grounded and those that only flew in the shielding embrace of low-Earth orbit. This may dampen future attempts to fly to Mars and elsewhere in the cosmos.
2016-06-24: AMAC: Yes, There Are Options When Planning a Funeral, by Angela Webster
To reduce stress on family members, many Americans are choosing to pre-plan their funerals by working with a funeral home or other provider to ensure that the arrangements reflect their final wishes. And you have certain rights that the funeral provider cannot deny.
2016-06-16: WaPo: Start-up wants to change how stocks are traded, by Renae Merle
Investors' Exchange wants to provide a venue for regular investors. IEX would delay every order to buy or sell a stock -- a 350-microsecond "speed bump" to prevent high-speed traders from cutting into the line to pick up stocks at the best prices, leaving slower mom-and-pop traders in the dust.
2016-06-09: Sun UK: Meet 'Generation Snowflake' - young women can't cope with being offended
A top British thinker has claimed young women are in the grip of a "hysteria" which has made them unable to cope with being offended. Mollycoddled kids are breaking down in tears when asked to deal with controversial ideas.
2016-06-06: WT: Book Review - 'Eamon de Valera: A Will to Power', by Ronan Fanning
Had de Valera been shot with the executed rebels of the Irish Easter 1916 uprising, his name would have been similarly immortalized, but Mr. Fanning doubts that Ireland could have achieved true national sovereignty for several decades -- or perhaps ever -- without his indomitable will, steely determination and political skill.
2016-06-05: Motley Fool: India's New Space Shuttle -- Cheaper Than SpaceX?, by Rich Smith
India has built a prototype space shuttle that looks an awful lot like ours -- but with a much smaller price tag. And since India doesn't regulate and test everything to death before flying it, the production model may eventually give SpaceX competition in launch costs.
2016-06-02: WT: English majors at Yale shun top writers, by Bradford Richardson
In something of a Shakespearean twist, English majors at Yale University don't want to study the greatest English writers. They are demanding that the English Department "decolonize" the curriculum by dropping a pair of Major English Poets required courses that feature works by dead white men.
2016-05-24: Newsmax: Koran's Reward of 72 Virgins Raisins? -- Canadian academic Irshad Manji
The Koran's promise to Islamic jihadists of a heavenly reward of 72 virgins actually mistranslates the word for "raisins," a Canadian scholar asserts -- a startling declaration that's fueling a twitter storm.
2016-05-16: WT: Students using devices to take notes perform worse, by Bradford Richardson
A group of economists went to West Point to measure the effects of integrating computerized devices into the classroom. The results: The technology-ridden classrooms scored 1.7 points lower on average in a 100-point exam than their pen-and-paper counterparts, perhaps demonstrating the pitfalls of multitasking.
2016-05-06: Ars Technica: SpaceX booster lands "very hot and fast" after launch, by E. Berger
SpaceX nailed it again. Early this morning, the Falcon 9 rocket delivered a Japanese satellite into orbit 36,000km above the planet's surface. Then the first stage slowed from supersonic speed, reentered the earth's atmosphere, and successfully landed on a robotic barge in the ocean some 200 miles downstream. (Complete video provided.)
2016-04-15: JWR: Connecting with the young across 'the generations gap', by Suzanne Fields
In today's world, how you communicate is deemed more important than what you say. There's no appetite for reading when 'books smell like old people'.
2016-04-09: AMAC: We are the 'Better Angels' we are looking for, by Diana Erbio
Milton Friedman to Phil Donahue: Greed is based in human nature, not inherent to any particular economic system. That is why the outcome of economic systems must be measured by the results, not the intentions. After all, isn't the road to hell said to be paved with good intentions?
2016-04-08: Examiner: One cheer for GE's Jeff Immelt, by Tim Carney
GE is a great American story of innovation, but the company's lobbying agenda and Immelt's rhetoric are often less than perfectly capitalist.
2016-04-08: Ars Technica: SpaceX booster lands on ocean barge after launch, by Eric Berger
SpaceX nailed it. On Friday night the Falcon 9 rocket shot 200km up into space and flew almost horizontal to the planet at six times the speed of sound, before falling back to Earth. Then, somehow, it landed like a feather on a robotic barge in the ocean.
2016-04-06: Epoch Times: Tax Havens? Forget Panama, Look at Delaware, by Valentin Schmid
The United States strong-arms other countries (through FACTA) to provide asset information on U.S. citizens, but doesn't have to reciprocate with other countries. This has effectively made the United States one of the world's biggest tax havens.
2016-03-24: WT: Men are fleeing Christianity, but embracing Islam, by Bradford Richardson
"Christianity presents itself as a religion of the powerless: 'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,'" Mr. Voas told Pew, quoting Matthew 5:5. "Depending on your point of view, that's appealingly feminine or appallingly effeminate." Islam is more of a muscular kind of faith, and women don't tend to fare as well.
2016-03-12: WaPo: These Christian teachers bringing Jesus into public schools, by Emma Brown
Finn Laursen believes millions of American children are no longer learning right from wrong, in part because public schools have been stripped of religion. To repair that frayed moral fabric, Laursen and his colleagues want to bring the light of Jesus Christ into public school classrooms across the country -- and they are training teachers to do just that.
2016-03-10: BW: The Democratization of Surveillance, by Robert Kolker
The StingRay is a suitcase-size device that tricks phones into giving up their serial numbers by pretending to be a cell phone tower. Various government units now use these devices with or without search warrants. But what are the implications when such technology becomes available to everybody?
2016-03-01: Epoch Times: James Grant on the Folly of Central Banking, by Valentin Schmid
Part of our problems stems from the attempts of the central bank to expropriate the formerly free market for some macroeconomic policy agenda with the result of distorting prices and thereby distorting the nerve endings in finance that tell you what's risky and what's not.
2016-02-18: Crisis Mag: Why Natural Law is a Superior Guide to Life, by James Kalb
Once the issue of man's nature and good is squarely raised as unavoidable, the arguments over particulars can begin. Under such circumstances the liberal or progressive view will have much less of an advantage, because its account of man and the world is so evidently false, and its status as orthodoxy depends on disguising its nature.
2016-02-11: AP: Scientists detect Einstein-predicted gravitational waves, by Seth Borenstein
The discovery of space-time ripples puts our view of the universe in a new light. Some physicists said this is as big a deal as the 2012 discovery of the subatomic Higgs boson, sometimes called the "God particle". Some said this is bigger.
2016-02-05: NYT: Who Needs Advanced Math? Not Everybody, by Jane Karr
Challenging convention in his new book, "The Math Myth and Other STEM Delusions", Andrew Hacker argues against the requirement that all high school students take a full menu of math. (Read also his Op-Ed: Is Algebra Necessary?)
2016-02-02: WT: Muslim cultural practices antithetical to Western pluralism, by Abe Miller
People do not leave their culture at the water's edge. If America follows Europe's immigration policies, it will experience the tragic consequences of Europe's cultural conflicts. Multiculturalism: meet reality.
2016-01-26: WT: Trump Derangement Syndrome sweeping the elite, by Charles Hurt
It is a fast-moving disease, highly contagious and attacks the nervous system. Early stages are inexplicable, fast eye-blinking, light palsy, stammering and overbearing snobbery. Sometimes redness of the face and shortness of breath accompany.
2015-12-21: Ars Technica: SpaceX booster lands intact after successful launch, by Eric Berger
SpaceX did it. On Monday night the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket soared into space, separated from the second stage, and then made a guided flight back to a landing site in Florida. The historic flight marked the beginning of the orbital economy by promising a future of dramatically lower launch costs.
2015-12-19: Fx Free Citizen: Conversion to Islam -- a Personal Story, by FCTA's Tom Cranmer
Mr. Cranmer relates a painful story. He and his wife had sponsored a bright Hindu boy fluent in English to come to the U.S. to study at a university some 25 years ago. While there, he met a Pakistani girl and they eventually got married, with the condition that the boy convert to Islam, go on a jihad, cease contact with Christians (including Mr. Cranmer) and with his parents.
2015-12-07: Ars Technica: The machines that make modern recycling work, by John Timmer
Over the last several decades, recycling has gone from a manual process to an extremely automated one, where things like infrared sensors and small jets of air mix with massive front-end loaders and enormous material balers.
2015-11-25: WT: Google deems Sanders' economic plan a 'phishing scam', by Stephen Dinan
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernard Sanders' economic plan triggered Gmail's "phishing scam" antenna, with the mail system saying the senator's liberal campaign promises -- including lower prescription drug prices and free college for all -- sound like frauds.
2015-11-24: DNC & WaPo & NYT -- "How to talk to your family about politics this Thanksgiving"
Year in, year out, a day or two before Thanksgiving, you can count on Democratic party hacks or their fellow travelers to crank out a "How to talk to conservatives at the holiday dinner table" piece. Apparently liberals are so cloistered from interaction with conservatives and so insecure in their own basic political beliefs that they actually need to be prepped before the most basic social engagement with the enemy.
2015-11-20: WaPo: Women's curves, mansplained -- Curvology book review, by Caitlin Flanagan
Almost 50 years ago, British zoologist Desmond Morris published one of the greatest works of pop science ever written: "The Naked Ape". Now, half a century later, Cambridge-educated veterinarian David Bainbridge attempts a similar feat with "Curvology", a book that takes "an evolutionary and zoological approach to the origins and power of female bodies."
2015-11-19: Examiner: O'Reilly's Killing Reagan is a 'pile of garbage' -- Craig Shirley
Craig Shirley, Reagan's official biographer opines in an interview: "No historian 100 years from now will reach for Killing Reagan ... The essential difference is O'Reilly strives for sales, the facts be damned, while I strive for accuracy and truth, as I did in my new Reagan book, Last Act."
2015-11-15: WT: A little history of 'politically correct' -- Editorial
The term "politically correct" was coined in the late 1920s by the Soviets and their ideological allies around the world to describe why the views of certain of the party faithful needed correction to the party line. The term carried no honor then and it carries none today.
2015-11-10: NR: David Horowitz's Journey from Left to Right, by Jamie Glazov
From red-diaper baby to New Leftist to champion and tutor of the Right. A recent quote: "For the Left, America is the hated seat of global capitalism and individualism. For Islamists, America is the hated seat of Western values, a bulwark against the global domination of Islam, and a wellspring of spiritual iniquity."
2015-11-08: WT: University officials agree to rip up Constitution -- Project Veritas sting
Conservatives have long accused academics of shredding the Constitution, figuratively speaking, but a Project Veritas sting operation recently caught them doing it literally. Administrators at Yale, Cornell, Syracuse, Vassar and Oberlin agreed to rip up copies of the Constitution handed out off campus after an investigator posing as a student described the document as "triggering" and "oppressive".
2015-10-29: WaPo: How McDonald's gets to kids while they're at school, by Roberto Ferdman
Two years ago, a 280-pound teacher in Iowa decided he would eat only food from McDonald's for six months. After 540 straight meals, he emerged 56 pounds slimmer. Since hired by McDonald's as a "brand ambassador", Cisna's story has prompted a lively debate about whether it is appropriate for McDonald's to use schools as a way to teach kids about healthy eating habits.
2015-10-22: JWR: Can California be saved?, by Victor Davis Hanson
Liberal ideologues are running the state into the ground. California is becoming like Detroit -- growing government that it cannot pay for, shorting the middle classes, hiking taxes but providing shoddy services and infrastructure in return, and obsessing over minor bumper-sticker issues while ignoring existential crises.
2015-10-22: TIME: Inside the Quest for Fusion, Clean Energy's Holy Grail, by Lev Grossman
Research into fusion as an energy source has traditionally been confined to massive government-sponsored research programs. Now a few entrepreneurs are racing to reach the break-even point using innovative engineering approaches at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods.
2015-10-15: AMAC: A Waiter Learns Why Socialism Doesn't Work, by Rob Knowles
Humans run on incentive, and if you take that away, they fall apart. Tip pooling is a microcosm of socialism. My roommate stumbled upon a profound principle of economics and human psychology, but is still a Bernie Sanders supporter. Maybe, with some gentle nudging, he may come around.
2015-10-14: Telegraph: Male brain is programmed to seek out sex over food, by Sarah Knapton
Researchers have found that the male brain is hardwired to seek out sex, even at the expense of a good meal, with specific neurons firing up to over-ride the desire to eat. And it is proof that male and female brains are wired differently, a controversial subject, which has been argued by scientists and feminists for decades.
2015-10-14: WT: Washington Times reaches profitability after 33 years, $1 billion in losses
The Washington Times announced Wednesday it achieved in September the first profitable month in its 33-year history, successfully transforming a traditional money-losing print publication into a leaner multimedia company with diverse revenue streams and a growing national audience.
2015-10-09: Guardian: Are shipping containers really the future of housing?, by Adam Forrest
From London to Amsterdam to Mumbai, shipping containers have been celebrated as a cheap and easy way to provide pre-fab housing. But what is it like to live in one -- and can they transcend pop-up status to be a permanent solution?
2015-10-06: Infowars: Matt Drudge Warns of the End of the Internet -- video (9:38)
Matt Drudge recounts a Supreme Court Justice telling him that freedom of speech will soon be a thing of the past. He sounds the alarm of multinational forces like the TPP hellbent on crushing dissent and killing freedom of speech under the guise of copyright.
2015-10-05: Examiner: If you really want to reduce economic inequality ..., by Michael Barone
Two things seemed to work to reduce economic inequality in the first half of the twentieth century -- world wars and economic collapse. By destroying vast amounts of wealth, they reduced economic inequality vastly. The lesson seems to be that if you really, really want economic equality, destroy things so that everyone is poor.
2015-10-04: Science News: Einstein's genius changed science's perception of gravity
Before Einstein, space seemed featureless and changeless. And time, Newton declared, flowed at its own pace, oblivious to the clocks that measured it. But Einstein looked at space and time and saw a single dynamic stage -- spacetime -- on which matter and energy strutted, generating sound and fury, signifying gravity.
2015-09-28: The Insider: False Economic Security and the Road to Serfdom, by Donald Boudreaux
A government that is resolutely committed to protecting people from any downsides of economic change requires nearly unlimited powers to regulate and tax, and fellow citizens are likely to suffer falling incomes as a result. The only way to prevent any such declines in income is near-total government control over the economy.
2015-09-28: WaPo: Trust in the media is at an all-time low, by Chris Cillizza
A member of the mainstream Democratic media establishment provides his take on a Gallop finding that just four in 10 Americans say they have a "great deal" or a "fair amount" of trust in the media to report the news fairly and accurately.
2015-09-22: JWR: Donald amongst the conservative eggheads, by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
Mr. Trump has perceived that political correctness rankles average Americans. It angers them when political correctness intrudes into school curricula, political discourse, and how government treats its citizens.
2015-09-19: JWR: Pope Francis' fact-free flamboyance, by George Will
Pope Francis embodies sanctity but comes trailing clouds of sanctimony. With a convert's indiscriminate zeal, he embraces ideas impeccably fashionable, demonstrably false and deeply reactionary. They would devastate the poor on whose behalf he purports to speak -- if his policy prescriptions were not as implausible as his social diagnoses are shrill.
2015-09-10: BBC: The chicken that lived for 18 months without a head
Seventy years ago, a farmer beheaded a chicken in Colorado, and it refused to die. Mike, as the bird became known, survived for 18 months and became famous.
2015-09-02: Epoch Times: Drought Could Turn Millet Into American Food, by Gretchen Kell
Millet is a type of grain crop that's been a staple for humans in many parts of the world. Millets are gluten-free; contain lower carbohydrates than rice, corn, or wheat; and have higher levels of proteins, fiber, and certain minerals. And millets are robust dryland crops, making them ideal for drought-prone areas such as California.
2015-09-01: JWR: The president who casts no shadow, by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
Gertrude Stein is famous for saying "There is no there there." Well, with Mr. Obama things get worse. There is no shadow there. Our 44th president will go down in history as the first American president who left the White House leaving nothing but a vast diapasonal sigh of relief across the nation.
2015-09-01: Last Refuge: Rush Limbaugh recognizes the GOP's "Splitter" strategy...
See, the point is you've got Bush, the establishment guy, and you've got some junior establishment guys up there. The junior establishment guys are all there to protect Jeb by taking money and votes away from the others who are not part of this, the Carsons, the Scott Walkers...
2015-08-23: WT: "Why I can't get a mortgage", by Stephen Moore
While my tax dollars are backing thousands and thousands of loans likely to default, my loan with close to zero probability of default can't get financed -- because I'm upper-middle class. This is considered fairness. Only in America.
2015-08-22: Examiner: The price of stealth -- and USAF's next-gen bomber, by Tara Copp
Northrop Grumman is competing against a team of Boeing and Lockheed Martin for the contract to build the B-3 bomber. Why? Because a long-range bomber capable of penetrating ever-more sophisticated missile and radar systems is a top strategic defense priority, and not just for the U.S.
2015-08-20: Politico: Democratic Blues... in Obama's wake, by Jeff Greenfield
No president in modern times has presided over so disastrous a stretch for his party, at almost every level of politics. Barack Obama will leave his party in its worst shape since the Great Depression -- even if Hillary wins.
2015-08-20: AMAC: To Win, You Have to Know How to Lose, by Fran Tarkenton
I think one of the best signs that someone has a good chance to be successful is when they know how to deal with failing. I learned more from losing than I ever did from winning, and my greatest successes have all come about because of the things I learned from things that didn't work -- that failed.
2015-08-13: MarketWatch: Map of the world, if size were determined by market cap
2015-08-09: WT: Herbert Hoover predicted the perils of big government, by Thomas V. DiBacco
Hoover is depicted as the Republican president who contributed to the misery of the Great Depression times. But FDR didn't make things any better. As Hoover correctly predicted: "Every time the government is forced to act, we lose something in self-reliance, character and initiative." He died in 1964, just before LBJ's Great Society was implemented.
2015-08-03: WT: The two Donald Trumps (Brash in public, kind in private), by Ron Kessler
"Donald can be totally outrageous, but outrageous in a wonderful way that gets him coverage." The private Mr. Trump, on the other hand, is "the dearest, most thoughtful, most loyal, most caring man." -- Norma Foerderer, Trump's top aide for 26 years.
2015-07-22: BBC: 'Oldest' Koran fragments found in Birmingham University, by Sean Coughlan
The pages of the Muslim holy text had remained unrecognised in the university library for almost a century. Radiocarbon dating found the manuscript to be at least 1,370 years old, making it among the earliest in existence.
2015-07-19: WT: The deprogramming of Dinesh D'Souza -- OpEd: Conservatism a mental disease?
After psychiatrists told Judge Berman they found Mr. D'Souza of sound mind, the judge ordered further psychoanalysis to find out why he's a conservative. The judge apparently can't understand why everybody can't be a liberal just like normal people.
2015-07-17: JWR: Harper Lee's 'Watchman' flips 'Mockingbird' on its end, by Suzanne Fields
Readers of "Watchman" are shocked that the same Atticus they knew in "Mockingbird" questions the inclusion of Negroes in the white schools, an issue that tore the South apart after the Brown decision, dividing families, permanently rupturing friendships and sometimes splitting church congregations. (The book is causing a frenzy in the Mainstream Media.)
2015-07-16: JWR: Liberalism's finger of fault always points outward, by Victor Davis Hanson
Human nature is unchanging, predictable -- and can be dangerous if ignored. But Liberals are always propounding new theories and policies promised to change human behavior. And they never seem to pay firsthand for the consequences of their own naive -- and selfish -- theories about human nature.
2015-07-13: WT: The summer the nation went mad -- Elite mob hysteria, by Wesley Pruden
Mobs are usually raised from the ranks of the poor. This time the leaders are the "respectables": know-it-all academics, the usual pundits looking for attention, rectors and reverends and other divines out to get a few lines in the public prints, governors, senators, mayors and assorted politicians in pursuit of voters with unrequited grievances.
2015-07-02: JWR: We are all Californians now, by Victor Davis Hanson
California keeps reminding us what has gone astray with America in recent years. Once leading the nation is how to get things done, California has for decades now assumed the mantle of political correctness, demonstrating to the rest of us how not to do things -- environmental obstructionism, bad schools, high-speed rail instead of roads, etc.
2015-06-16: Limbaugh: My Advice for Apple's News App: Hire DRUDGE!
The most successful news website in America, by far, is the Drudge Report, with more people looking at it every day than any other single website. If Apple wanted a really successful news app, they'd hire Matt Drudge. But they won't, and so they'll show the same content that you'd find on CNN or the New York Times.
2015-06-15: WT: State of the American Mind: On the new Anti-Intellectualism -- Book review
The anti-intellectualism trends identified in Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind" in 1987 have only gotten worse. Americans actually know less now than they did just a generation ago despite astonishing amounts spent on education and technology that gives worlds of knowledge to everyone's phone.
2015-06-14: WT: Magna Carta's first 800 years, by Bruce O'Brien
The 1215 Magna Carta barons' and Edward Coke's achievements four centuries later were milestones on the road toward protecting citizens against the state. We have far to go before we can say that Magna Carta's principles of justice are enjoyed by all of us.
2015-06-09: Examiner: Washington Free Beacon a headache for New York Times, by Becket Adams
For the New York Times, ignoring an upstart conservative news site called the Washington Free Beacon has resulted in not only unflattering headlines for the 164-year-old newspaper, but it has also thrown the Gray Lady's objectivity into question.
2015-05-27: Ars Technica: SpaceX's Falcon 9 certified for nat'l security, military launches
... thus breaking the monopoly currently held by the United Launch Alliance (a joint venture operated by Boeing and Lockheed). SpaceX will now be allowed to compete for very lucrative launch contracts for military and reconnaissance satellites.
2015-05-19: WT: Boy Scouts ban water guns-- "pointing a firearm not kind", by Douglas Ernst
The manual includes a lengthy list of other prohibited items -- boomerangs, crossbows, potato guns, spear guns and throwing stars. Scouts also may not use "marshmallow shooters that require placing a straw or similar device in the mouth." (Welcome to the Girl Scouts!)
2015-05-14: BW: Elon Musk's Space Dream -- a modern-day Howard Hughes, by Ashlee Vance
Elon Musk started SpaceX to send mice to Mars. He has created a lean-and-mean operation reminiscent of the U.S. aerospace firms of the mid-twentieth century -- "just do it" attitude that is the exception to the ways of the modern defense establishment.
2015-05-14: WT: Women in military can't march like men... Subject to stress fractures
In trying to integrate women into combat roles, the Army is finding that women are more susceptible to stress fractures from marching and training. Special boots may help, but it is more likely that women just walk differently than men, and are not suited for the same combat training exercises.
2015-05-07: The Hill: Is Matt Drudge the second most influential man in America?
One of the great mysteries of modern life is that the highest Democrats in the land complain about Drudge, read Drudge like talmudic scholars poring over biblical texts -- as Republicans do -- but have never even tried to compete with Drudge in the marketplace of media and ideas. (Rush Limbaugh comments!)
2015-05-05: The Intercept: How NSA converts spoken words into searchable text, by Dan Froomkin
Top-secret documents from the archive of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show the National Security Agency can now automatically recognize the content within phone calls by creating rough transcripts and phonetic representations that can be easily searched and stored.
2015-04-xx: Swiss America: The Biggest Bank Heist In History, by Craig Smith, Lowell Ponte
"Virtually zero percent interest rates are to long-term economic policy what junk food is to nutrition -- it tastes great going down, but later come horrible results....[that] pose dangers for all of us.... ZIRP [is]...how the Fed gave the U.S. Financial Diabetes." -- Gregory Bresiger, Business Journalist
2015-04-27: WT: Liberals and magical thinking -- OpEd, by Tammy Bruce
We all know that children think magically, and naturally inhabit a world of fantasy and imagination. But adults on the left seem to have decided they deserve to live in that same magical world, where facts and logic and reason just don't exist. And those who are behaving the most like children, relying exclusively on feelings, emotions and fantasy, are in positions of power and influence.
2015-04-07: BBC: Bendy battery promises safe, speedy charging -- aluminum and graphite
Scientists have built a flexible aluminium battery which they say could be a cheap, fast-charging and safe alternative to current designs.
2015-03-31: WaPo: How America's most famous farmer can appeal to left, right and center
You've heard of Joel Salatin, right? The self-proclaimed heretic who runs Polyface Farm in the Shenandoah Valley? The eco-friendly, avant-garde Old MacDonald featured in Michael Pollan's 2006 bestseller, "The Omnivore's Dilemma", and the 2008 documentary "Food, Inc."? The vociferous critic of industrial feedlots and petroleum-based monoculture?
2015-03-24: Examiner: Deja vu once again -- How liberals explain election failures
Every time an election result disappoints liberals, it's never because the liberals did anything wrong. It's always because they were made to have seemed to, by someone who tapped subconscious fears of something quite different -- most often that old standby, race.
2015-03-20: Bacon's Rebellion: Uh, Oh, Maybe We Haven't Reached "Peak Car"
While total Vehicle Miles Traveled is nearing its previous peak, VMT per capita still remains considerably below the peak. My new modified position is that driving will continue to increase but on a slower growth trajectory than in previous decades.
2015-03-12: WT: D.C. streetcars go back and forth to nowhere, by Deborah Simmons
After already spending more than $160 million (and millions more for the study and yakkety-yak) to design and construct a street line that runs a mere 2.4 miles, city leaders could scrap the project. And that might not be a bad idea. Buses are cheaper.
2015-03-10: Fx Free Citizen: The Christian "Church": Missing in Action, by Mike Giere
If the America we have known is lost, it will be because we have undone the Judeo-Christian ties that once secured the civil society, and because a large part of the modern "church" has been missing in action -- yielding to the long-term cultural collapse -- rejecting what it once was and what it is called to be.
2015-03-09: MarketWatch: Understanding the IRA mandatory withdrawal rules -- after age 70 1/2
For traditional IRA owners: If you're going to turn age 70 1/2 this year (2015), the IRS requires that you begin taking withdrawals from your account, starting no later than April 1 of 2016. Here's what you need to know to do it right.
2015-03-03: WT: M. Stanton Evans, conservative icon, dead at 80 -- Obituary
"We have two parties here, and only two -- one is the evil party, and the other is the stupid party," he said. "I'm very proud to be a member of the stupid party. Occasionally, the two parties get together to do something that's both evil and stupid. That's called bipartisanship."
2015-02-23: Examiner: A brief history of the Internet, leading to Obama's "net fix"
This coming Thursday, Feb. 26, the Federal Communications Commission will formally pass its fourth set of regulations on broadband Internet services. It's a sobering thought. The Internet is working well, so it's not obvious that the FCC needs to help it. The reasons for regulatory change are purely political.
2015-02-21: Video: President Obama, do you really love America?, by CJ Pearson (3:01)
This black preteen from Georgia shares Mayor Giuliani's assessment of the president, and adds his own views as eloquently as any adult.
2015-02-16: Reuters: Russians expose breakthrough U.S. spying program => "Equation Group"
The NSA has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world's computers, according to cyber researchers and former operatives. (Details here.)
2015-02-04: WT: Redneck ethnic cleansing on the Shenandoah -- Book review by James Bovard
Few things vanish from public memory more quickly than government atrocities. When I was growing up on a mountainside across from the Shenandoah National Park in the 1960s, no one spoke of the injustices committed against the mountaineers brutally expelled from their homes in the 1930s to create that park.
2015-01-29: Examiner: Transportation mode of the future: The bus, by Michael Barone
Rail lines are by definition inflexible: planners had better be right about consumer patterns 50 years from now. Bus companies can change service locations and times by clicking on the Internet.
2015-01-28: WT: California protects the chickens, Al Gore targets the humans, by Ernest Istook
Add chicken rights to regulators' abuse of the Endangered Species Act, and you see that America is on the verge of giving animals more special rights protection than people get. It's scary when activists agitate to coop up the people but allow the chickens free range. They must think that freedom is for the birds.
2015-01-28: WT: 'American Sniper' thrills Baghdad crowd -- 'Shoot him! He has an IED!'
Clint Eastwood's "American Sniper" has wowed American audiences, but for one short week it also thrilled crowds in Baghdad. Iraq's upscale Mansour Mall played the film for one week before the controversy surrounding the film prompted management to end showings. (Of course, WaPo has a different opinion!)
2015-01-22: Examiner: Student journalist Daniel Mael on free speech and campus culture war
Daniel Mael, a 22-year-old student journalist at Brandeis University, reported on fellow student Khadija Lynch's malicious tweets in the aftermath of the death of NYPD officers Liu and Ramos, and Lynch was subsequently sanctioned. End of story? Of course not.
2015-01-15: BW: Forget Everything You Didn't Understand About Bitcoin, by Carter Dougherty
Conceived as a substitute for conventional currency, without the involvement of established institutions, Bitcoin is poised to evolve into a money transfer system that would do what Western Union or Citigroup does, only more cheaply and efficiently.
2015-01-13: Examiner: Piketty's data don't match the facts, by Jason Russell
Thomas Piketty's tome on inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, a surprise best-seller that was widely hailed by liberals, is filled with flaws, according to a new study.
2015-01-10: Red Nation Rising: Muslim Extremists are an Extreme Problem, Politically Incorrect
The Shoe Bomber was a Muslim; The Beltway Snipers were Muslims; The Fort Hood Shooter was a Muslim; The underwear Bomber was a Muslim... etc.
2014-12-17: WT: 'Twas the night before Christmas -- Updated for modern times
2014-12-11: WT: The Bible's Influence -- 25 articles sponsored by the Bible Literacy Project
Regardless of one's beliefs, no one can deny the influence of this one book on human history nor dismiss its value either as literature or as a guide to a better world.
2014-11-25: Telegraph: Frenchman develops pills to make flatulence smell of roses
65-year-old inventor says he came up with his range of indigestion tablets after he was "nearly suffocated" by the smell of farts.
2014-11-24: Examiner: WaPo editor defends 'fact check' on SNL Obama skit (executive amnesty)
... telling the Examiner that his article was meant only to explore "interesting questions". ..."Only thing funnier than SNL's Obama amnesty power grab sketch is [the Washington Post] actually doing a 'fact check',” one-time Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said in a tweet.
2014-11-23: The College Fix: "Do The Left Thing", by Omar Mahmood
Read the 'hostile' column that got a University of Michigan student writer suspended from the campus newspaper.
2014-11-17: Yahoo: Facebook slams the door on political campaigns, by Jon Ward
An upcoming code change means Obama's groundbreaking 2012 outreach on the site won't happen again.
2014-11-17: WT: The Stupidity of 'Experts' -- Obamacare, Gruber Warming, Dodge-Frank, etc.
The whole socialist and big-government ideal is predicated on the notion that the intellectuals can bring us nirvana -- but something always goes wrong. Yet, blissfully, without self-doubt, they go from failure to failure to failure, as others pay the price.
2014-11-10: WaPo: Washington National Cathedral to host Friday Muslim prayer service
ACT! for America response: "We challenge those running the nation's one and only National Cathedral to find a mosque -- anywhere in the world -- inviting a rabbi, priest or pastor into that mosque to conduct a service."
2014-11-09: Daily Mail: Algae-borne virus found that makes us more stupid [... more Liberal?]
The virus, called chlorovirus ATCV-1, was only known to appear in algae. Researchers in U.S. have not established how it comes to infect humans. Research suggests it alters genes in brain including memory and emotion. Scientists found 44 per cent of patients tested had virus in their throats.
2014-10-20: Examiner: A nation divided by marriage -- Interview with W. Bradford Wilcox
Examiner: Why is marriage so important? What does it do that government programs can't do? Wilcox: Three pillars undergird opportunity in America for most men and women. Those three pillars are: one, education; two, work; and three, marriage.
2014-10-20: KHouse: Thorium - One Nuclear Alternative
Thorium has become an attractive potential alternative to conventional nuclear fuel. It isn't naturally radioactive and its power-plants would not be prone to meltdown. Nearly the entire fuel rod can be used in energy production without the serious national security and nuclear waste issues of using conventional uranium fuel. Plus, thorium is abundant.
2014-10-07: Smash Co: OOP, an expensive disaster ... analogies for today's world (now 404)
This long (now gone) article described an extremely flawed software paradigm (Object Oriented Programming), but brought up such philosophical issues as... "talking past each other because we can not understand the axioms on which each other's arguments rest". (For an anti-OOP article, go here.)
2014-10-03: Video: Frightening Details From Beheader's Oklahoma Mosque (9:07)
Chilling details about activities at the Oklahoma City mosque which beheading suspect Jah'Keem Yisrael attended. In the video, an undercover operative reveals a hidden Jihadist culture in the mosque during his two years there.
2014-09-18: Ars Technica: Apple expands data encryption under iOS 8 -- To cops: "Get Lost"
"Apple's old policy for extracting user data from iPhones for law enforcement: Come back with a warrant. Their new policy: Get lost."
2014-09-17: The Atlantic: Why I Hope to Die at 75, by Ezekiel Emanuel; Breitbart response.
The author of Obamacare's 'Death Panels' asserts: "Once I have lived to 75, my approach to my health care will completely change. I won't actively end my life. But I won't try to prolong it, either." John Nolte at Breitbart responds.
2014-09-17: MercatorNet: It's time to take the Islamic State seriously -- Rev. James Schall
A Catholic priest has taken the time to thoroughly study Islamic doctrine and the history of Islam and has articulated his findings and opinions in very clear terms. It serves as an excellent analysis for the origins of the Islamic State with which we are now at war.
2014-09-05: Video: "Republicans Are People Too" (1:37) -- Who put together this zaney video?
2014-09-04: Telegraph: What happens when your friends start leaving Facebook?
I logged in north, south, east and west. / I checked it at work and during Sunday rest. /
I liked and commented, posted status and song. / I thought Facebook would last forever: I was wrong.
2014-09-02: Video: Former Muslim describes the true face of Islam (8:35)
Brother Rachid addresses President Obama about ISIL and Islam; he explains to him how ISIL is imitating the prophet Muhammad in every detail they do. ISIL represents Islam.
2014-08-17: Examiner: Iraq, Ferguson, and the 'libertarian moment'
This wariness of big solutions, this skepticism of government's ability to right wrongs, is at the heart of the wiser strains of libertarianism and the more consistent forms of conservatism.
2014-08-11: Examiner: The most liberal and conservative U.S. cities revealed in one chart
2014-08-10: WKRB: SyNAPSE Chip by IBM Mimics Brain
The True North computer chip by IBM is designed to think as a human brain does. The size of the chip is equal to a postage stamp yet it is able to outdo the majority of supercomputers.
2014-07-22: Infowars: How Matt Drudge Changed the World
The establishment's iron-fisted grip on media and information dissemination was irrevocably transformed when Matt Drudge launched his website in 1998. Suddenly Americans and the world at large were no longer dependent on a skewered and politically-driven corporate media with its distorted establishment spin and agenda.
2014-07-22: WaPo: Don't send your kids to Ivy League Schools!
The author summarizes yesterday's article in the New Republic. "[T]he students who are sent there are conformist, over-privileged overachievers. They emerge from homogeneous backgrounds and grow up to be elitist little twits."
2014-07-18: Nat'l Journal: Elizabeth Warren's 11 Commandments of Progressivism
2014-07-16: Examiner: The things Obama likes to say in just about every speech, in 76 seconds
2014-06-xx: First Things: The Good of Government, by Roger Scruton
American conservatives need a positive view of government. They have an obligation to map out the true domain of government, and the limits beyond which action by the government is a trespass on the freedom of the citizen. But it seems to me that they have failed to offer the electorate a believable blueprint for this...
2014-06-28: ZeroHedge: Warning - Civil Unrest Is Rising Everywhere: "This Won't End Pretty"
Martin Armstrong: "The greatest problem we have is misinformation. People simply do not comprehend why and how the economic policies of the post-war era are imploding. ... Even confiscating all the wealth of the so-called rich will not sustain the system. Consequently, we just have to crash and burn and start all over again."
2014-06-27: WT: An obituary for the Tea Party
The Tea Party, the popular political movement that grew from widespread public concern over the growth of government, died on Tuesday, June 24, in Mississippi. ... The Tea Party is dead; long live the fight for limited government.
2014-06-06: JWR: The monotony of thought in the modern university, by Victor Davis Hanson
A funny thing has happened on the way to the 21st century. Colleges that were once our most enlightened and tolerant institutions became America's dinosaurs.
2014-05-29: Examiner: Why even Reagan couldn't be Reagan today, by Michael Barone
Michael Barone gives a detailed analysis of Ronald Reagan, and claims he was a political leader suited for the times. Aspiring Republican politicians may claim Reagan's mantle, but in today's America even Ronald Reagan could not be Reagan.
2014-05-27: Examiner: A historian who understood why big business wanted regulation
Every American knows the fable of the Progressive Era and that "trust buster" Teddy Roosevelt wielding the big stick of federal power to battle the greedy corporations. We would be better off if more people knew the work of the man who dismantled this myth: historian Gabriel Kolko, who died this month at age 81.
2014-05-12: Defense One: What the Most Secure Email in the Universe Would Look Like
Say you wanted to send an email more secure than any message that had ever been transmitted in human history, a message with absolutely no chance of being intercepted. How would you do it?
2014-04-20: Quarks To Quasars: Will MOND replace the "dark matter" theory?, by Joshua Filmer
The "holy grail" of a scientific theory is one that can make accurate predictions of phenomena in advance. Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) is an alternative to dark matter theory and attempts to explain the gravitational discrepancies seen in the motions of galaxies.
2014-04-07: Chris Dixon: The decline of the mobile web (Reversing this 2011 prediction.)
People are spending more time on mobile vs desktop and more of their mobile time using apps, not the web. This is a worrisome trend for the web, and for the innovation inspired by its truly open architecture.
2014-04-06: WaPo: Serious reading takes a hit from online scanning and skimming -- researchers
Humans seem to be developing digital brains with new circuits for skimming through the torrent of information online. This alternative way of reading is competing with traditional deep reading circuitry developed over several millennia.
2014-04-06: Ars Technica: Not dead yet: Dutch, British gov'ts pay to keep Windows XP alive
Windows XP is supposed to be dead next week. But the Dutch and British governments have both inked deals with Microsoft to continue to keep it on life support, at least for them - under Microsoft's Custom Support program.
2014-04-01: WT: An Anxious Age: Post-Protestant Ethic and Spirit of America -- Book review
So there is a hole in the center of American culture. Once filled by the mainline and not replaced by Catholicism, that space has been filled by a kind of extreme individualism; religion is what you make of it, or you can make nothing of it.
2014-03-06: Peter Schiff: What Needs to Happen to Bring Production Back to the US
In an Epoch Times interview, the CEO of Euro Pacific Capital says reduced government key to unlock productive potential.
2014-03-05: The Week: Why American internet so slow? (Also Protest-1, Protest-2, Your speed?)
The country that literally invented the internet now ranks a shocking 31st in the world -- behind Estonia -- in terms of download speeds. Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, and AT have "divided up markets and put themselves in a position where they're subject to no competition."
2014-02-24: BW: The Unlikely Tale of How ARM Came to Rule the World
This is a story about ARM Holdings, the British mobile technology company. Just about every smartphone, mobile phone, and tablet runs on an ARM chip. Still, a great many people have not heard of ARM.
2014-02-19: Nat'l Journal: Pandora Knows How You'll Vote
The online music service is telling political campaigns what music you listen to, which they say gives away your party affiliation. (Wonder how they'd rate these selections?)
2014-02-07: Breitbart: WaPo laments that Democrat groups have no one like the Kochs
An odd claim considering that the left has spent the better part of the last 40 years creating dozens of purported think tanks and agenda shops like the Center for American Progress (CAP), and in George Soros has one of the richest men in the world funding Democrats and their issues at nearly every turn.
2014-02-07: Ars Technica: GOP arms itself for next "war" in analytics arms race
Borrowing from Obama's successful 2012 digital campaign, the RNC wants to leapfrog the Democrats technologically by building an infrastructure that will not just help their next presidential contender, but Republicans across the board.
2014-01-21: Snopes: How to Create a Social State -- 8 levels of control; Saul Alinsky?
A flood of recent emails have credited Saul Alinsky, in Rules for Radicals, with describing 8 levels of control that must be obtained before you are able to create a social state. But what did Alinsky actually advocate, and what is the real source for these "8 levels".
2014-01-09: Reason: Dumbest New Ban in 2014 -- Incandescent Light Bulbs
Before the incandescent bulbs go out for good, it's worth shining a light on its cause: The ban was pushed by lightbulb makers eager to upsell customers on longer-lasting and much more expensive halogen, compact fluorescent and LED lighting.
2013-11-15: WSJ: The World of English Freedoms -- by Daniel Hannan
It's no accident that the English-speaking nations are the ones most devoted to law and individual rights.
2013-10-14: Hannah Arendt on How Bureaucracy Fuels Violence, by Maria Popova
In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one could argue, to whom one could present grievances, on whom the pressures of power could be exerted. It is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act -- tyranny without a tyrant. It is this state of affairs which is among the most potent causes for the current world-wide rebellious unrest.
2013-04-16: EneNews: "Vandalism" to major power transformer triggers power alert
Here are the original articles on what appears to be an attempt by terrorists to attack key points in the electrical grid, perhaps as a precursor to future more serious and focused attempts. (The event did not receive national coverage at the time.)
2013-03-11: Video: Paper is not dead -- Emma.... (0:38)
2013-01-31: Video: The Girls on Fox News (4:17 min)
This rockin' song by Austin Cunningham will surely brighten up your day.
2012-11-27: Video: Best Conservative Speech of 2012 (Bill Whittle) (15:30 min)
Imagine how the 2012 presidential election would have come out if Mitt Romney had actually enunciated the Republican conservative message he claimed to believe, as Bill Whittle narrates.
2012-07-28: NYT: Is Algebra Necessary?, by Andrew Hacker
Yes, young people should learn to read and write and do long division, whether they want to or not. But there is no reason to force them to grasp vectorial angles and discontinuous functions. Think of math as a huge boulder we make everyone pull, without assessing what all this pain achieves.
2012-06-02: Boston Herald: Elizabeth Warren profited by flipping homes, by Jerry Kronenberg
Elizabeth Warren, who has railed against predatory banks and heartless foreclosures, took part in about a dozen Oklahoma real estate deals that netted her and her family hefty profits through maneuvers such as "flipping" properties, records show.
2011-xx-xx: Iron Spider: Tables vs. Tableless Web Design, by Robert Darrell
No doubt there are those who think that I'm going straight to web developer hell for having the audacity to teach people to use tables to layout web pages instead of using tableless designs. However, tables are more intuitive, and are less likely to cause browser presentation problems such as "float dropping". (This fcta.org site uses tables.)
2011-12-xx: Book: The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power
Recommended reading. Author Melanie Phillips writes: "In what we tell ourselves is an age of reason, we are behaving increasingly irrationally. A loss of religious belief has led the West to replace reason and truth with ideology and prejudice. The result has been a kind of mass derangement, as truth and lies, right and wrong, victim and aggressor are all turned upside down."
2011-11-xx: The Conservative Tree House discusses Liberalism vs Conservatism
... "Which lends to the following theory: Fear is at the core of liberalism, and love/trust is at the core of conservatism. Liberalism is about control. Conservatism is about self-empowerment."
2011-11-18: Waco Tribune: "Put Me In Charge ...", by (21-year old female)
... "AND While you are on Gov't subsistence, you no longer can VOTE! Yes, that is correct. For you to vote would be a conflict of interest. You will voluntarily remove yourself from voting while you are receiving a Gov't welfare check. If you want to vote, then get a job."
2011-05-19: MIT Tech Review: Why Mobile Apps Will Soon be Dead, by Christopher Mims
Mobile app exist because of a lack of standards in the mobile device community. They will eventually be replaced by web apps, where developers could code once and be reasonably confident their app will work on any object -- phone, tablet, laptop, etc. -- with a standards-compliant browser.
2011-05-13: Limbaugh: Origins of the EIB Theme Song -- Transcript
2010-12-10: Dear Abby, My husband has a long record of money problems. -- Lost in DC
2010-08-20: Video: When You're Holding a Hammer, Everything Looks Like a Nail (3:09 min)
A 26-year old assistant coach was fired from a Tennessee middle school for political incorrectness in producing and posting this rockin' anti-Obama song. One line: "If the stuff hits the fan, don't look at me, if you got trouble, blame forty-three."
2010-01-29: Cenedella: Leonardo da Vinci's Resume
Before he was famous, before he painted the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, before he invented the helicopter, before he drew the most famous image of man, before he was all of these things, Leonardo da Vinci was an artificer, an armorer, a maker of things that go "boom".
2009-12-24: OLD FART PRIDE... It's just getting harder to find them.
2009-11-16: NPR: Predicting The Next Credit Crisis, by Joshua Kosman
Joshua Kosman, author of The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisis, explains how PE firms hurt their businesses competitively, limit their growth, cut jobs without reinvesting the savings, do not even generate good returns for their investors, and are about to cause the Next Great Credit Crisis.
2008-04-21: Ars Technica: Why Microsoft Software Sucks and Apple's Doesn't - Parts 1, 2, 3
A 3-part series by Peter Bright -- Part 1: How misfortune and adversity left Apple with a new OS platform free of legacy constraints. Part 2: How Microsoft had failed to do the same, choosing instead to hobble its new OS with way too much legacy baggage. Part 3: What Apple has done with its platform to make it so appealing.
2008-04-08: Universe Today: A Case of MOND Over Dark Matter, by Nancy Atkinson
Some astronomers believe the orbital behavior of galaxies can be explained more accurately with Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) -- a modified version of Newton's Second Law -- than by the rival, but more widely accepted, theory of dark matter.
2007-04-xx: GFOA: A New Vision for Public Sector Audit Committees, by Stephen J. Gauthier
2005-01-12: Epoch Times: Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party
1) On What the Communist Party Is; 2) On the Beginnings of the Chinese Communist Party; 3) On the Tyranny of the CCP; 4) On How the Communist Party Is an Anti-Universe Force; 5) On the Collusion of Jiang Zemin with the CCP to Persecute Falun Gong; 6) On How the CCP Destroyed Traditional Culture; 7) On the CCP's History of Killing; 8) On How the CCP Is an Evil Cult; 9) On the Unscrupulous Nature of the CCP
2004-05-17: Bill Cosby's "Pound Cake" Speech -- Video (3:41)
2003-06-03: Scheme to compress genomic codon triplets into readable ASCII text, by David Swink
Your friendly FCTA webmaster came up with this scheme after leaving Celera Genomics in 2002.
2002-11-26: WaPo: My Heart on the Line, by Frank Schaeffer
Have we wealthy and educated Americans all become pacifists? What is the future of our democracy when the sons and daughters of the janitors at our elite universities are far more likely to be put in harm's way than are any of the students whose dorms their parents clean?
1996-01-24: KC Star: Urgent Prayer for America, by Pastor Joe Wright
When Minister Joe Wright was asked to open the new session of the Kansas Senate, everyone was expecting the usual generalities, but this is what they heard...
1995-05-30: Aish.com: Moe Berg - Baseball Player and WWII Spy
Moe Berg was a second-rate baseball player but a first-rate spy for America and its Allies leading up to and during World War II.
1957-xx-xx: Ayn Rand: "This is John Galt speaking"
"For twelve years, you have been asking: Who is John Galt? This is John Galt speaking. I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values. I am the man who has deprived you of victims and thus has destroyed your world, and if you wish to know why you are perishing -- you who dread knowledge -- I am the man who will now tell you."
1957-xx-xx: Ayn Rand: Francisco's Money Speech
"So you think that money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them... Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?"
1949-11-04: NY Daily News: Ode to the Welfare State
The troubles of our time strike us as new and unique. They are not. Here is a small example from over 60 years ago that appeared in the Daily News. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
1850-xx-xx: The Law -- Frederic Bastiat analyzes government proclivities versus human nature
In 1850, faced with a tide of sentiment toward socialism, French legislator Frederic Bastiat confronted the left's claims of government superiority with a timeless critique, The Law, perhaps the most penetrating analysis of human nature after the Bible, C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, and Shakespeare.
.Not Dated: Wikipedia: The Curta calculator -- created in a Nazi death camp
The Curta is a small mechanical calculator developed by Curt Herzstark. It has an extremely compact design: a small cylinder that fits in the palm of the hand. Curtas were considered the best portable calculators available until they were displaced by electronic calculators in the 1970s.
.Not Dated: Skeptics Annotated Bible... Quran... Book of Mormon -- Accurate original material
This website points supposed errors, contradictions, and discrepancies -- divided into the following categories: injustice, absurdity, cruelty and violence, intolerance, contradictions, family values, women, good stuff, science and history, prophecy, sex, language, interpretation, and homosexuality. You may not agree with their comments, but their original material is accurate.
.Not Dated: History Lesson: Liberals vs Conservatives Joke
The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer...
.Not Dated: Why Grandpa carries a gun!
Free citizens must protect themselves. With guns, we are 'citizens'; without them, we are 'subjects'.
.Not Dated: Online Music Oldies, by FCTA's David Swink
You may enjoy some of the online music selections listed here, including classical, rock, fox trots, and much more. (Note that any of these Youtube and mp3 selections can be disabled by the owner at any time.) Enjoy!