Daily Links From Glimpse From a Height
- The President Attacks Charitable Deductions
Again. How far would Obama’s proposal cause total itemized contributions to fall? Experts predict up to $5.6 billion each year. This is only a small percentage of total annual charitable donations, but it is more than the annual operating budgets of the American Cancer Society, World Vision, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Habitat for Humanity, and the […]
- 13 Charts To A Better Economy
The case against Obamanomics. I still think this is the best one:
- Trucking Prices Set To Rise
By 3-5%. This has a lot to do with capacity tightening, and the article doesn’t seem to address gas prices at all. Carriers have been loath to expand their fleets, which is going to lead to spot shortages. Capacity also isn’t being helped by those new driver rules, which even the drivers don’t like. In […]
- Capabilities, Not Intentions
China’s asymmetric warfare: By combining the ability to knock down American military satellites, while at the same time launching Internet based attacks at American military, government and commercial Internet activities, China believes it could make up for a lot of current American military superiority. There’s no reason to think that war with China is inevitable, […]
- So You Want To Be An Architecture Critic?
Ada Louise Huxtable’s, “Sometime We Do It Right” as a model: But this judgment of the curtain wall is only a fraction of what she has to say — she’s rewritten her assignment on the fly, because the new building is the least of her concerns. In fact, Huxtable never says the building is good […]
- NPR To Be “Fair To The Truth”
So say their guidelines: NPR’s guidelines promise an end to “he said, she said” journalism that tries to be fair to both sides of an issue. From now on, the network will ask its reporters to be fair to the truth: “In all our stories, especially matters of controversy, we strive to consider the strongest arguments […]
- Long-Term Unemployment Still a Problem
Given the large jump in unemployment, and the very slow recovery of jobs, long-term unemployment is still a large problem for the economy. A couple of other charts, also from the same BLS data:
- UNESCO Discovers Israel’s Science
After having pretended nothing happened from 2005-2010: At issue is the agency’s latest five-year Science Report, which lists the world’s major scientific contributions from 2005 to 2010. Among Israel’s many achievements in medicine, physics, chemistry, and other sciences during that period, was the Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to Yonath for her work on ribosome structure. That distinction did not […]
- Gaming the Academic System
Citation fraud: …editors frequently and deliberately force researchers to quote articles that originally have not been considered relevant by them. Usually the editors them them to refer to articles which were published in the very same journal the authors submitted their work to. Wouldn’t be the first time.
- Quantum Entanglement
Is there anything it can’t do? This experiment consists of a laser beam shaped into an image, such as the letter A. This laser then hits a non-linear crystal, generating entangled pairs of photons that retain this image shape. The set up is such that these photons are then detected, not by conventional detectors, but […]
- Iran’s Not The Only EMP Threat
One-in-eight chance of catastrophic solar megastorm by 2020. Such an extreme event is considered to be relatively rare. The last gigantic solar storm, known as the Carrington Event, occurred more than 150 years ago and was the most powerful such event in recorded history. That a rival to this event might have a greater than […]
- The Great Gravity Showdown
You wouldn’t think that a 6th-decimal-place discrepancy in Planck’s Constant would be that big a deal. Unless you were trying to standardize the kilogram so you didn’t need to rely on an actual physical object, that is.
- Climate Change Devastating Everest?
So, is global warming making Everest more dangerous to climb? Or not? Or maybe the sherpas are trying to push through a rate increase.
- 3D Printing-palooza
The Smithsonian will be digitizing a certain amount of their collection, for 3D printing, in much the same way that a fair portion of the Library of Congress has done for images in its American Memory online archive or prints, photographs, maps, etc. And as the printers become more advanced, able to print things that […]
