The New Yorker – Filibusters and arcane obstructions in the Senate
The weakened institution could no longer withstand pressures from outside its walls; as money and cameras rushed in, independent minds fell more and more in line with the partisans. Rough parity...
View ArticleThis Is What I Think – Traditional Marriage Perverts the Tradition of Marriage
Over a summer of research, I learned a lot of surprising facts about the history of marriage and weddings, but by far the most shocking discovery of all was that the tradition of marriage-as-we-know-it...
View ArticleFiveThirtyEight – The Most Overrated Concept in Elections Analysis: Momentum
In general elections, the direction in which polls have moved is not predictive of the direction in which they will move. Thus, it is usually wrong to say that a candidate is gaining ground in the...
View ArticleThe New Yorker – Sorting out the Senate
In the nineteenth century, filibusters were rarer than visible comets. For most of the twentieth, they were still rare—about as frequent as solar eclipses—and reserved for special occasions, such as...
View ArticleThe New Yorker – The battle over the Constitution
A great deal of what many Americans hold dear is nowhere written on those four pages of parchment, or in any of the amendments. What has made the Constitution durable is the same as what makes it...
View ArticleCosmic Variance – Scientists Aren’t Always Complete Idiots
Nobody is harder on scientific theories than scientists are. That’s what we do. You don’t become a successful scientist by licking the metaphorical boots of Einstein or Darwin or Newton; you hit the...
View ArticleKickstarter – Standing Up To The Experts by Orlando Wood
In a small room in Austin, Texas, a group of fifteen people are single-handedly deciding what is taught to the next generation of American children. The highly politicized fifteen-member Texas State...
View ArticleSpaceflight Now – Discovery heads into retirement
Technicians in bay No. 2 of Kennedy Space Center’s Orbiter Processing Facility remove shuttle Discovery’s forward reaction control system (FRCS) on March 22 as part of the ship’s transition and...
View ArticleProp Store – Butter Cup Valley
It was the Spring of 1982. In the Southern California desert region known as Buttercup Valley, cameras were rolling on a film called BLUE HARVEST: HORROR BEYOND IMAGINATION. A SoCal science-fiction nut...
View ArticleBBC News — Cambridge University puts Isaac Newton papers online
The notebooks in which Sir Isaac Newton worked out the theories on which much classical science is based have been put online by Cambridge University. More than 4,000 pages have been scanned, including...
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