Category Archives: Uncategorized

For me it’s three. In addition to my main inbox, which serves as a holding pen for my most pressing matters (i.e. messages that I must respond to before I go to bed), I make use of only three email … Continue reading →

Via Wikipedia (citations omitted): “In four raids between 13 and 15 February 1945, 722 heavy bombers of the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and 527 of the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs … Continue reading →

That is the title of a spoof college essay posted by Alexis Pereira (@MrAlexisPereira) on Twitter the other day. (See picture below.) According to Wikipedia, Tom and Jerry is a series of animated short films created by William Hanna and … Continue reading →

Once upon a time, the academic economist Harold Hotelling (pictured below, left) developed a formal mathematical model called the median voter theorem to help explain elections. According to this influential theory of politics, a majority rule voting system will select … Continue reading →

Maybe they are not yet big enough! Check out the following excerpt from this report by David Roberts (via Vox; link in original): “It is impressive as an engineering feat, but the significance of growing turbine size goes well beyond … Continue reading →

The headline of a front-page story in last Friday’s New York Times (7 Feb. 2020) states that an estimated $1.6 billion in Hurricane Maria insurance claims remain unresolved. This sounds like a serious crisis of epic proportions, one requiring more … Continue reading →

Review (part 2 of 2) of Matthew W. Slaboch, A Road to Nowhere: The Idea of Progress and Its Critics (U Penn Press, 2018). In my previous post, I mentioned that the concept of progress might have a cultural or … Continue reading →