Category: Uncategorized

In Dymaxion Man Elizabeth Kolbert discusses the life of Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller. Prompted by a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art which opens later this month. One of Buckminster Fuller’s earliest inventions was a car shaped like a blimp. The car had three wheels–two up front, one in the back–and a periscope…

Yes, I’m leaving this morning for another long road trip to the Midwest. My blogging output will necessarily be light to nonexistent, but with any luck M. Simon will keep people entertained and enlightened. (Don’t miss his latest fusion report.) I’ll try to check in when I can, time and weather permitting. Ugh, weather! People…

I just read a report that not all Democrats are endorsing Barack Obama, and I was reminded of an interesting topic I heard discussed on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show — is Obama to the left of McGovern? The consensus was that he is, and by any objective standard I think that is so, as Obama…

Alan Boyle has a new report on the goings on in New Mexico at EMC2 Fusion Labs. Emc2 Fusion’s Richard Nebel can’t say yet whether his team’s garage-shop plasma experiment will lead to cheap, abundant fusion power. But he can say that after months of tweaking, the WB-7 device “runs like a top” – and…

“This country is starting to feel second-rate to me, and it’s not a pleasant feeling.” So says David Post, a Philadelphian who (like me) is horrified by the state of public transportation. (Via Glenn Reynolds.) The worst part of this entire experience was that nobody really seems to give a damn, or be in the…

Philadelphia is one of the most heavily Democrat cities there is. So, when I read that John McCain’s Straight Talk America was coming to Philadelphia for a Town Hall, I just had to go. That required standing in a long line in front of the Constitution Center, and waiting another two hours, but it was…

Abu Dhabi is buying solar cell manufacturing plants from the US in order to make solar cells 2.2 meters by 2.6 meters (7 ft 2 1/2in by 8ft 6 3/8 in). As part of its drive to become a world leader in alternative energy, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates-based Masdar PV announced this week it…

Yesterday I went to New York for an exciting evening with three favorite bloggers — Sean Kinsell, Connie du Toit (best known to bloggers as Mrs. du Toit), and her husband, the one and only Kim du Toit. Sean (who has recently moved back from Japan) and Connie (visiting from Texas on a business trip)…

Professor X has written a wonderful piece on his troubles in a very low level English 101 class. He has studied the matter up close and personal and has some wise words on the subject. For I, who teach these low-level, must-pass, no-multiple-choice-test classes, am the one who ultimately delivers the news to those unfit…

If you’ve been wondering what’s behind the scenes in the ridiculous fight that Spike Lee started with Clint Eastwood, don’t miss Roger L. Simon’s analysis. He thinks the motivation is simple jealousy, cloaked in the form of Lee’s bitter identity politics: ….for more than a decade Spike has barely made a film any of us…

In honor of this election season’s very own VooDoo child. Hendrix live at Berkeley (how appropriate) 30 May 1970.

I went for my usual three-mile-run yesterday. Normally, such an observation would not qualify for the blog, as I try to avoid blogging about mundane personal activities. Really, do people want to hear about what I eat, what I wear, what time I go to bed, and how thoroughly I brush and/or floss my teeth?…

After lamenting Jon Stewart’s “sexist riffs against Hillary Clinton” and a “compilation of venomous idiocies, most but not all from Fox News” the Inquirer’s Chris Satullo opines that sexism alone was not what defeated Hillary Clinton: …though Clinton was targeted by sexists, she didn’t lose because of that. She lost because Obama was a candidate…

I was reading something Wretchard wrote at The Belmont Club and came across this comment: Inasmuch as the economy is in the toilet and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are unwon, all the math is pointing toward the Democrat winning. Obama has one little problem. He doesn’t do unscripted. He also has a little problem…

In fact from the look of things it may always be the Fusion Reactor of The Future. A massive international nuclear fusion experiment planned for Cadarache, France, is set to cost up to 30% more than anticipated and be delayed by as much as three years, governments will learn next week. Construction has not even…

Here is a very funny audio clip if you have a bent mind. Thanks to RJ40. Cross Posted at Power and Control

While it always sounds clich&eacute-ish to say it, what needs to be said more often is that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Steve Boriss (who blogs at the Future of News) looks at the history of free speech, noting that with every technological advance in communication came another heavy-handed attempt by government to…

When I read about the principal who got in trouble with mean-spirited radio talk shows for issuing diplomas referencing the word “educaiton,” I initially laughed. Principal Timothy Freeman fell on his red pen, shouldering responsibility for the diplomas issued to 330 Westlake graduates at the Wolstein Center in Cleveland on Saturday that read board of…

I enjoyed Katherine Scalia’s look at Barack Obama as the new trophy wife of the Democratic Party: As a trophy wife, Obama would be content to let the Democrats pull out of Iraq; Hillary might actually suggest they stay. Obama would be able to sell the socialized health care Hillary couldn’t pull off. Most importantly,…