Daily Links From Glimpse From a Height
- Greeks and Jews
For Hanukkah, via Mosaic. Leo Strauss on the separate missions of the Jews and the Greeks. Yet our intention to speak of Jerusalem and Athens seems to compel us to go beyond the self-understanding of either. Or is there a notion, a word that points to the highest that both the Bible and the greatest […]
- Japan’s Solar Ring Around The Moon
Behold the power of this fully-operational substation! Shimizu, a Japanese architectural and engineering firm, has a solution for the climate crisis: Simply build a band of solar panels 400 kilometers (249 miles) wide (pdf) running all the way around the Moon’s 11,000-kilometer (6,835 mile) equator and beam the carbon-free energy back to Earth in the form of microwaves, which […]
- Appreciating Bagehot
A review of a new biography of The Greatest Victorian, written in the form of memoirs. From what I’ve known of Bagehot, I’ve always liked him, now I have a better idea of why. Quoting from Bagehot’s actual writings, which assert that free institutions thrive among dullards, Prochaska goes on, “The English are unrivalled in […]
- Time-Varying Pricing For Electricity
Pricing electricity by demand saves consumers money and encourages more efficient usage: Sacramento Metropolitan Utilities District (SMUD) has decided that time-varying pricing makes sense. It saves the utility money because it doesn’t have to buy as much expensive wholesale power during peak periods. And, it can pass these savings on to customers. It thus has […]
- Curiouser and Curiouser
Practically nothing about quantum mechanics surprises me any more: In their proposed experimental set-up, the physicists show that a photon will travel through the left arm of an interferometer with 100% certainty, yet its polarization can be detected in the right arm, where there is 0% probability of the photon traveling. That is, the photon […]
- Billionaire Lobbyists On Keystone XL
It’s not what you think: Billionaire Tom Steyer plans to renew his fight against Keystone XL in Washington on Monday. NextGen Climate Action, founded by Steyer, will host a summit where participants will argue the Keystone XL pipeline proposed by TransCanada Corp. cannot pass President Obama’s climate test…. Steyer is opposed to the pipeline project […]
- How Partisan Are Your Representatives
A cool interactive info-graphic from Visualizing.org. In Colorado’s case, pretty partisan. If you’ve been listening to feminist propaganda about what the world would look like if women ran it, filter by Sex.
- Bad Time for Climate Alarmist Predictions
First, Roger Pielke, Jr. notes the relatively constant rate of US hurricane landfalls over the last century, which has culminated in a record time between Category 3+ landfalls: The red line in the graph above shows a decrease in the number of US landfalls of more than 25% since (which given variability, may just be […]
- Cheap Cute Dog Post
Good to end the day with:
- No, Your GMO Corn Isn’t Killing You
The paper that gave so much hope to anti-GMO luddites is being retracted by the journal in which it appeared: All of these criticisms of the study could have been incorporated into the original press coverage, except for the fact that the people behind the study manipulated journalists to ensure that they were unable to obtain any […]
- Howdy, Neighbor
The Solar Neighborhood, with locations, temperatures, and sizes of the nearest stars.
- More Openness, More Sales
So says a study showing a sales boost from removing DRM from music: According to Zhang, the 30% sales increase for lower-selling albums can be explained by the fact that DRM-free music makes it easier for consumers to share files and discover new music. The finding that removing DRM from top-selling albums has no effect […]
