Monthly Archives: June 2016

Jesse Walker: Two Kinds of Social Conservatism – Hit & Run – Reason.com

If you want to stave off a “majority-minority” America, and especially if you want to do this because you think it threatens your culture’s values, then you are trying to conserve central elements of your society. You are, in the

Posted in Noted & Quoted, Politics, Religion Tagged with:

Weaponizing the Sky – The Atlantic

…[P]aranoia aside, the systems are nevertheless accumulating. In 2014, for example, the U.S. Air Force launched a trio of satellites in geosynchronous orbit to keep “neighborhood watch” over other satellites. Indeed, “space weaponization is inevitable,” David C. Hardesty has written

Posted in International Relations, Noted & Quoted, War

Timothy Egan: A Week for All Time – The New York Times

In this week of trial and tragedy, Trump showed us how he would govern — by fear, by intimidation, by lies, by turning American against American, by exhibiting all the empathy of a sociopath. Seal this week. Put it in

Posted in Noted & Quoted, Politics Tagged with:

Pseudoerasmus: The Empire of Cotton: A Reductionist Summary

  In other words, the Beckert recipe is: start with Marx and “primitive accumulation“, both domestic and international. Marx had gleefully welcomed the imperialists’ destruction of the “semi-barbarian, semi-civilized communities [of Bengal], by blowing up their economical basis, and thus produced the

Posted in Books, Economics, History, Noted & Quoted

Getting Right with Image Rights: WP Replace Unlicensed and Broken Images Plug-In

A primary use for WP-RUBI will be at sites where administrators have decided to remove images that have been used either without permission or under lapsed or lapsing usage licenses: Proper employment will help to reduce or eliminate legal and actual “exposure” quickly and easily, without harming the site’s search engine rankings and while preserving posts as originally composed, allowing for eventual restoration.

Posted in Using WordPress, WordPress Plug-Ins Tagged with: , , ,

Nicholas M Gallagher: Andrew Jackson’s Nationalist Politics Are Back – National Review

While conservatives are more than within their rights to write off Trump, they would be neither wise nor justified to write off the Jacksonians. They may be disgusted with Trump’s antics, and they may find some Jacksonian positions inchoate, wrongheaded,

Posted in Neo-Imperialism, Noted & Quoted, Politics Tagged with: , ,

Could we really call it a ‘temple’? – The Tepe Telegrams

As already noted in the beginning, we know little of the beliefs these people might have followed, so it would seem rather bold to denote these monumental pillar-statues as personifications of ‘deities’. But faceless, larger than life and highly abstract,

Posted in History, Noted & Quoted, Religion, Science

Jennifer Rubin: Time for panic or for #NeverTrump – The Washington Post

After shaking the sleep from their eyes and mulling over the bleak future of their party, Corker and Graham’s fellow Republicans would be wise to take several steps. First, they should explain why as Americans, as conservatives and as Republicans

Posted in Noted & Quoted, Politics Tagged with: ,

A Trump Rally Live-Tweeted

“Suv blaring I Am A Real American, waving Trump hats and flipping off homeless and car with Mexican flag. What reality is this…”

Posted in Politics, US History Tagged with:

Mickey Edwards: Unlike Paul Ryan, Ronald Reagan wouldn’t endorse Donald Trump – Wisconsin State Journal

Trump is no longer the immature buffoon who captured the nomination with the support of roughly one in nine registered Republicans. Trump is now, because of Ryan, the anointed and endorsed national personification of the Republican Party. With his endorsement,

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