In conventional guns, a bullet begins losing acceleration moments after the gunpowder ignites. The railgun projectile gains more speed as it travels the length of a 32-foot barrel, exiting the muzzle at 4,500 miles an hour, or more than…
Monthly Archives: May 2016
@Noahpinion: “if this doesn’t impress you, you’re *choosing* not to be impressed.” – Twitter
“@ViscidKonrad Man, if this doesn’t impress you, you’re *choosing* not to be impressed.” From: Noah Smith on Twitter: “@ViscidKonrad Man, if this doesn’t impress you, you’re *choosing* not to be impressed. https://t.co/RHqXRjU4WI”
Frederic C. Hof: The Non-Option of Disengagement from the Middle East – MENASource
The next president, like it or not, will have his or her hands full with the Middle East. The starting point for getting anything right is to reject the proposition that we will always get it wrong; that it is…
Sam Haselby: Why did the secular ambitions of the early United States fail? – Aeon Essays
In hindsight, American secularism has experienced both clear victories and stark defeats. The Anglo-Protestant heresy of making all members of the political community into Luther’s sovereign individuals has become something of an American orthodoxy. Who is more consistently certain that…
Peter Baker: Rise of Donald Trump Tracks Growing Debate Over Global Fascism – The New York Times
Mr. Paxton, the fascism scholar, said he saw similarities and differences in Mr. Trump. His message about an America in decline and his us-against-them pronouncements about immigrants and outsiders echo Europe in the 1930s, Mr. Paxton said. On the other…
Célia Belin: A Pendulum Swing on Foreign Policy? Not So Fast – War on the Rocks
There is a deep division within American society on U.S. engagement in the world. The split is perfectly illustrated by recent Pew Research Center figures of public support for the use of ground troops in Iraq and Syria to fight…
The fall of Salon.com – POLITICO Media
“We were inmates who took over the journalistic asylum,” David Talbot, who founded the site in 1995, wrote on the Facebook page. “And we let it rip — we helped create online journalism, making it up as we went along.…
Posted in Internet, Noted & Quoted
Jennifer Rubin: The Trumpkin hall of shame – The Washington Post
After getting out of the race, he stuck with the mealy-mouthed position that he had pledged to support the nominee, so he would. Then Thursday, he took a big swig of the Trump Kool Aid and told CNN’s Jake Tapper…
Michael Brendan Dougherty: How the Bernie Sanders insurgency staved off a much bigger threat to the Democratic Party – The Week
Clinton, like any mainstream Democrat, was going to have some vulnerability on her left flank. But Sanders has kept left-wing and socialist energy (which is rising, nationally) within the Democratic Party. Yes, by running as a Democrat, Bernie has had…
Jonathan Hunt: Not Just War: How Hiroshima Became a War Crime – War on the Rocks
The nuclear challenges that await the United States are increasingly about quality rather than quantity. As U.S. and Russian arsenals grew smaller and more restrained, others have moved in the opposite direction. North Korea threatens to strike Washington and Seoul.…