Monthly Archives: June 2016

Carbon nanotubes too weak to get a space elevator off the ground – New Scientist

The team’s simulations show that the kink acts as a weak point in the tube, easily snapping the normally strong carbon-carbon bonds. Once this happens, the bonds in the adjacent hexagons also break, unzipping the entire tube. The effect on

Posted in Noted & Quoted, Science, Technology

Is Particle Physics About to Crack Wide Open? – Scientific American Blog Network

The importance of this result is clear to everybody working in the field and it has immediately triggered a huge amount of work on the possible implications. None of the more fundamental models that currently exist as possible replacements for

Posted in Noted & Quoted, Science

Jonathan Chait: The Fearmonger Republicans Have Been Waiting For – NYMag

The post-Bush-doctrine Republican Party is no longer guided by an idealistic and impractical vision for defeating radical Islam. All it has left is a residue of fear and nationalism, ripe for manipulation by a demagogue. The logic of Trump’s conquest

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

The classics and the Constitution: The smokescreen of republicanism and the creation of the Republic – OUPblog

Neither Adams nor the authors of the Federalist Papers were classical republicans in either the Aristotelian, Sallustian, or Machiavellian sense of the term. In a way you could say, therefore, that the political theory of the Constitution and the ratification debates left

Posted in Noted & Quoted, Political Philosophy, US History

How we caught a glimpse of a supermassive black hole having a meal – The Conversation

Galaxy clusters such as Abell 2597 build up an extremely hot plasma around them, which some predict can gradually cool and rain down to feed the central supermassive black hole. We know from previous work that the black hole in

Posted in Noted & Quoted, Science Tagged with:

Peter Wehner: The Indelible Stain of Donald Trump – The New York Times

What we are talking about is potential generational damage to the Republican Party. Consider this historical comparison: In 1956 the Republican nominee, Dwight D. Eisenhower, won nearly 40 percent of the black vote. In 1960, Richard Nixon won nearly a

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

Damon Linker: Trumpism for intellectuals – The Week

Heidegger’s judgment of the Nazis has been much on my mind since reading a recent Peggy Noonan column about an obscure but exceedingly interesting website called the Journal of American Greatness (abbreviated JAG) — really an anonymous collective blog for idealistic

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

Jay Nordlinger: #ExGOP… – National Review

If someone now says to me, “Ha, ha, Donald Trump is the presidential nominee of your party!” I say, “No, he isn’t.” He represents the Republicans, who, on the basis of this nomination, are transformed. I respect, admire, and love

Posted in Noted & Quoted, Politics

Jennifer Rubin: The speech Republicans need to give – The Washington Post

I therefore have no choice but to withdraw my support for Mr. Trump for president. President John F. Kennedy famously said, “Sometimes party loyalty asks too much.” In this case, party loyalty would require I support a man who is

Posted in Noted & Quoted, Politics Tagged with: ,

Subtweet (American Conservative Eschaton)

With less and less semblance of temperamental conservatism, ever more self-destructively, nominally conservative Americans have sought in vain to immanentize as eschaton the non-immanentization of eschaton.

Posted in Featured, Political Philosophy, Politics, US History