Commentary

A collection of 31 posts

Nature

All of Ours

Hundreds of thousands of stars are crammed together in that one spot, each seemingly fighting for elbow room among its brethren. At the center of the clot, the stars are packed so closely together that you can't find any black sky between them. It's like an

Members only

Commentary

Dunebunker Gives Trump Her Soapbox Derby Trophy

Nature

At the Circus

“If you can come up with something that [rich people will] regard as special, you can really make a lot of money selling to them,” said Robert Frank, a professor of management and economics at Cornell. “So, a lot of the ingenuity in the economy gets directed to things that

Members only

Commentary

Georgia Floyd County GOP Declares Heads AND Tails!

Nature

Alone On a Hill

Day after day Alone on a hill The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still – Lennon-McCartney, The Fool on the Hill, 1967 It was quiet on the hill. Sitting in the afterglow. Waiting for the comet. "You look like you are here for more than the sunset,

Members only

Commentary

Spelunking the Cave

Members only

Commentary

Long-Term Weather Pattern Unsameness Attributed to Scuzzy Joule 533nmHouse Gas Farts

Members only

Commentary

Tariffs R Us

Nature

Exceeding the Limit

“There are three interesting things about NGC 5907 – the Splinter Galaxy,” said Max. “Oh, yeah? Like what?” I asked. We had cruised to rest in a vast interstellar region towards the outskirts of the Splinter Galaxy, just inside the circling dust and smoke lanes. A galactic park, in effect, where

Members only

Commentary

What Part of "Absolute Immunity" Do You Not Understand?

Members only

Commentary

Trump to Return Alaska to Russia in Exchange for Epstein Files

Nature

Searching for a Splinter in a Smoke Stack

"I don't think we're going to make it, Max. I can't see a thing." That was strange. There wasn't a cloud in the night sky, the usual Spring humidity was uncharacteristically low, and the upper atmospheric currents were reported to

Members only

Commentary

Congressman John McGuire (R Va-5) Takes Out Big Bird

Members only

Commentary

Trump Finishes Last at International Best Hat Contest

Members only

Commentary

The Sound of Hollow

Nature

Keep It Forever With You

The wind whistled through the tack, rustling the straps on the luggage tied up top. It was not clear which was worse, the miles of rutted path, or the miles of mud threatening to suck the horseshoes right off the team straining to make forward progress. A sharp chill was

Environment

Zack Labe (NOAA) -- Just Fired by DOGE

I recently wrote a piece on this site that examined the concept of climate tipping points. In that piece I focused on two climate change features that have the potential to give us an early warning on climate disaster: the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, and Arctic sea-ice collapse. After a

Nature

A Billion Years

It is easy to picture our galaxy as just a bunch of static stuff. Where most of us live the night sky is a mild gray luminescence, polluted by urban light. Maybe the moon is out, behaving like the moon always does, in the same old, same old. There might

Members only

Commentary

Senator Tim Kaine Has a Website

Democrats are paralyzed. Even with the advanced warning right there in Project 2025, courtesy of the clueless Heritage Foundation, they are still paralyzed. Senator Chuck Schumer appears particularly comatose. He can post on X, and appear geriatric chanting at a mini-protest in front of Treasury. But mobilize a Democratic opposition?

Members only

Commentary

Flog Me With a Wet Noodle

Whew! I’m so glad the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been solved by President Trump! “They’re dying, Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying. And I’ll have that done — I’ll have that done in 24 hours.” – Donald J Trump, CNN town hall, May 2023.

Members only

Commentary

One Ringy Dingy, Two Ringy Dingy

"Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?" – with apologies to Ernestine Two hundred thousand unsubscribers are not wrong. The saga of the contested Trump-Putin phone call demonstrates that Jeff Bezos has done more harm to the reporters at The Washington Post than all the cancellations

Members only

Commentary

Why I Canceled My Subscription to The Washington Post

On Friday I canceled my subscription to The Washington Post. Since then, as each WaPo newsletter has arrived in my inbox, I have unsubscribed as well. And here’s why. I have been hard on the news and commentary media this year. And that includes The WaPo, The NY Times,

Members only

Audio

It Doesn't Have to Be This Way

The Scene CNN reports: "There have been at least 50 school shootings in the United States so far this year, as of September 19 [2024]. Thirteen were on college campuses, and 37 were on K-12 school grounds. The incidents left 24 people dead and at least 66 other victims

Members only

Commentary

The Average of Garbage is Garbage

I only had one nerve left, and the Washington Post had to grab it and twist. Grab it, with the headline “Harris’s rise in the polls has stalled, while Trump holds steady.” And then twist, with the most tortured, misleading data analysis I’ve read in a long time.

Members only

Commentary

King of the Wild Frontier