Author: nick

In the decades before the Wright brothers historic 1903 flight at Kitty Hawk there were many claims of powered heavier-than-air flying machines. There were also many false sightings of “airships”, amounting to a form of mass delusion. But the false claims and false sightings do not change the fact that the technology for powered flight was right on the cusp, and that the Wright brothers crossed that threshold in 1903, leading ultimately to the massive industry we have today. This is not surprising. There is often a sense, in the industry and spreading to the public, that the technological pieces…

Most people in UFO circles are aware of the UFO wave of 1947 that, essentially, kick-started the Modern UFO Era, as well as the subsequent waves that followed throughout the fifties and sixties. Likewise, many are aware of the waves of airship sightings that swept the United States, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There are, though, many other UFO waves, sometimes specific to a particular country, that have flared up since the second half of the twentieth century, all of which are as intriguing as they are unique. Source link

“Gretchen, I’m sorry I laughed at you that time you got diarrhea at Barnes & Noble. And I’m sorry for telling everyone about it. And I’m sorry for repeating it now.”—Karen Smith in Mean Girls 1 Popular culture, including literature and film, often extols the value of friendship and the important emotional role it plays in the lives of women and girls. From The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Memoirs of a Geisha, and Anne of Green Gables to films such as Steel Magnolias, Thelma and Louise, and Bend It Like Beckham we see portrayals of female friendship that highlight social and emotional support as it occurs…

Friday, April 10th on RealClearPolitics – Joined by RCP Contributor Lanny Davis Source link

Justice Sotomayor is on a speaking tour. In a series of public remarks, she has offered some striking comments about her colleagues. On Wednesday, she spoke in Lawrence, Kansas about Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo. “I had a colleague in that case who wrote, you know, these are only temporary stops,” Sotomayor said, referencing a concurrence written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, during an event Tuesday hosted by the University of Kansas School of Law. “This is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.” . . .…

Yesterday morning, when Donald Trump declared “[a]n entire civilization will die tonight[,]” Ray Bradbury was first to my mind. In sophomore year of high school, our English teacher had us read Fahrenheit 451. So began my adoration of Bradbury’s poignant storytelling and exquisite prose. In 451, Bradbury crafts an iconic world where books are illegal and “firemen” are tasked not to fight fires, but to burn books and execute or imprison their readers. Provocatively, this policy is not enforced through top-down diktat. It is the people themselves that demand it. In the backset of 451, there are always military jets…

The Gulf of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz. Photo by Matthew Stevenson. I don’t think there is anything that gives Donald Trump quite so much pleasure as failure, perhaps one of the reasons why he is so enjoying blowing through $50 billion in taxpayer money on his way to numerous defeats in the Strait of Hormuz. I realize Trump has taken out primetime copyrights on various brands of success—all those “arts” of the deal—but at the end of the day what Trump likes most is to measure himself by the size of his failures (no doubt the only time…

Forty-six years ago, I told an editor of The New Republic that I’d like my first article for this publication to be about the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Source link

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has said the SAVE America Act “could disenfranchise over 20 million American citizens,” while Republicans dispute that the voter registration and ID bill would block any legitimate voters. Election experts say the bill, which isn’t expected to pass, would make it difficult for some unknown number of voters to register and cast a vote. At times, Schumer has used more definitive language about the bill’s impact, saying that “more than 20 million legitimate people … will not be able to vote under this law” or that it “would disenfranchise tens of millions of people.” Schumer…

Here is one narrative violation in the usual drumbeat of doom that we’re used to hearing about housing in America: The rent, in many cities across the US, is getting cheaper. Source link