In a recent poll, reading in America is revealed to be, well, less than appreciated by large swaths of the population. This ought come as no surprise. We live in a time of stupendous ignorance, which allows for the expression of epic stupidity. The Founding Fathers were suspicious of democracy…
In an article from the Washington Post we learn that the United States has slipped in the ranking for life expectancy in the world to number 42. Douglas Adams aside, this is not a good thing. The article lists a good many factors contributing to this fact, which seems paradoxical…
In recent news, another highway bridge collapsed. Every 20 years or so, a major bridge fails unexpectedly. The nature of civil engineering is to understand how things fail, and design the next generation to avoid that failure. Each failure leads to better designs. Each of the major bridges that collapsed…
Silly bureaucracy in action! An internationally renowned cyber-guru who often comes into the U.S. to train DoD, DoE, and other alphabet soupers was held for 4 hours by customs, and deported as he came in to speak at a Black Hat convention. His own report on the issue makes it…
This is the title of a newspaper commentary column that I stumbled onto recently. It was less annoying than I thought it would be. The "New Facts" turn out to be mainly the testimony of Ken Ham's Creation Museum (Here's my earlier post about that). One gripe I have is…