Republican insiders seem to have suddenly woken up to something that others have been noticing for years, that their party has been taken over by open cranks. Hence it is hardly surprising that the Republican party establishment has begun attacking Rick Santorum in earnest. [Read more…]
Radiation has a very bad reputation. There is something about it that scares the daylights out of people. This is understandable since the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki produced graphic images of the devastation that radiation could cause. The Cold War generated additional fears of radiation silently killing off large numbers of people. Even today, one sees the fears generated by the phrase ‘dirty bombs’ that kill by nuclear radiation. [Read more…]
Jonathan Turley has posted an update based on a statement reportedly made by the judge that challenges some of the facts reported in the original story about the assault on [Read more…]
I am one of those people who can fall asleep almost anywhere at almost any time, even on planes. But in addition to such naps, I also value getting a good continuous night’s rest, which is usually conceived of as about eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.
So I was surprised by this report of a study that said [Read more…]
It is clear that there are serious vertical inequities in the tax code, in the sense that some people who are in the highest income quintiles, and even some of those in the top 1%, pay federal taxes at a lower rate than those in lower quintiles. Bruce Bartlett shows a [Read more…]
Michael Caine is one of my favorite actors and has a reputation for knowing lots of arcane bits of information that he brings out in conversations, ending it with what has becomes his catchphrase, “Not many people know that”.
Because of his distinctive manner of speaking he is also widely impersonated by his fellow actors. In this interview with Michael Parkinson, Caine is [Read more…]
Russian scientists have managed to grow a plant from 32,000 year old seeds that had been buried by an Ice-Age squirrel. (Who knew that the Ice Age animated films were documentaries?) The previous record for such an achievement was a mere 2,000 years. [Read more…]
The two posts on changing the seasons (here and here) resulted in a lot of interesting information in the comments and it seems like there is quite a geographical variation in how the seasons are demarcated, with the US possibly being an outlier in using the solstices.
Reader ahcuah is a kindred soul and has kindly sent me the data he collected over a full year of the daytime high and low temperatures. He lives fairly close to Cleveland and [Read more…]