Tag Archives: Featured Stories

Toward the end of a very interesting and worthwhile conversation about how right-wing “populism” co-opts righteous anger at established institutions, Vincent Bevins asked Naomi Klein how she would counter that co-optation. Her answer was to advocate a “real left that has a political program that is actually redistributive,” which sounds good until you realize that the capitalist economy is already massively redistributive so “redistributing the...

Comparing energy efficiency of boiling water: household appliances Michael D. Eissenberg, BSME, PE, Leed AP*, and Joel C. Eissenberg, Ph.D.* *co-corresponding authors Abstract Kitchen appliances use various mechanisms to heat, with differences in energy sources and geometry. The goal of this study was to compare energy efficiency across common household appliances. To facilitate comparison, 1 L of water was used as the heating substrate...

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or...

The biggest near-term threat to human civilization from global warming is loss of fresh water and arable land for crops. It turns out that nature has confronted the challenges of increased temperature, increased salinity, disease resistance and violent weather. Recently, as strain of maize called “Jimmy Red corn” has been resurrected from a population bottleneck in which only two ears remained. Why should we care about Jimmy Red?“Jimmy Red dwindled...

I see where the latest gambit by House Republicans is to tie Ukraine aid to immigration “reform.” Setting aside the fact that aid to Ukraine is, like most foreign aid, a subsidy for US business, the linkage to immigration is a red herring. All the current approaches are failing, are doomed, and are a waste of taxpayer money, something the GOP pretends to care about.I’ve long held that the solution to most undocumented immigration is to reduce...

Eight out of ten of our poorest states are former states of the Confederacy. Less than a handful of the original Confederate states have been able to begin to rise. The ‘again’ was always impossible. Because, in the antebellum South, one percent of the population had all the wealth; most whites were little, if any, better off than slaves. —, politically unstable, economy dependent on the export of one or two products such as agricultural products,...

Obviously the only thing any reasonable person would do is point and laugh at the Republicans. I am not that reasonable person, so I will try to think of a solution. Obviously one very boring possibility is that the Republicans will finally get their act together and elect a speaker. This is the most likely outcome, but very far from optimal. The other possibility is that a speaker will be elected by a bipartisan majority like the majority...

I do not follow the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians closely because it is complex, well outside my area of expertise, and deeply depressing.  I find it depressing because I have always believed in a two-state solution, and it has long been difficult watching that goal slip ever further out of reach.  After the barbaric terror attack on Israelis by Hamas and the increasing likelihood of an excessively brutal Israeli response it is worth...

Currently US ally Israel is responding to a massive terrorist invasion. The US response is slightly hampered by the fact that the  United States has “no confirmed ambassadors to Israel, Egypt, Oman, or Kuwait”, also “the counterterrorism envoy position and human rights envoy position as well as the top job at the U.S. Agency for International Development are unfilled. ” ” these nominations … have been held in limbo all these months thanks to...

You know that Hungarian woman who shared this year’s Nobel in Physiology or Medicine? She struggled to get and keep an academic career. Eventually, she was pushed out of her lab at Penn.“That morning at the lab, Karikó’s old boss had come to see her off. She did not tell him what a terrible mistake he was making in letting her leave. She didn’t gloat about her future at BioNTech, a pharmaceuticals firm that millions now associate with lifesaving...