Nolan’s Odyssey is Nolan’s Odyssey. That might seem like an obvious statement, but it is one that many seem to ignore. Nolan has made his own interpretation of Homer’s epic poem—in the same way that Homer, if he ever existed, was making his own interpretation of the historical events that might have occurred. In the…
Money has one face, the face of the boss: In this case, Cyrus McCormick, a strike at whose Reaper Works led to the Haymarket protests that gave us May Day. I apologize for lack of content on this blog-slash-newsletter lately. Among other excuses, I’ve just been elected chair of the John Jay Economics Department. Many…
Yves here. While I was aware that more and more workers were being shifted into non-employee status, even if they were coming to the same site and performing the same duties every day, I had no idea that they now account for more than 1/3 of total positions. No wonder real wages have been stagnant…
Yves here. While it may seem a parochial to discuss American Christianity, it has become a very powerful force in the US, not just through Evangelical support of Zionism but also on the broader and more durable plane of social values. Among the many developmental experiences most people have that I missed was that I…
Note: Last week’s Friz Lang selection was provided by reader AG, not AK as I wrote. Greeting gentle reader and welcome to another installment of the Sunday Morning Movie. Today it’s a tale of power and sacrifice, The Mattei Affair: and next week’s film, Kamilla: Løperjenten (1981) Reviews of The Mattei Affair: Letterboxd says: Wow!…
Dear patient readers, Today we offer supersized Links with Iran War and Borat Agreement sections in lieu of an Iran war post. * * * The Case for Aesthetic Education JSTOR (Micael T) The upper limits of biology Works in Progress (Micael T) ‘Living donor’ horror case triggers crackdown in US RT (Kevin W) Why…
70,000 people illegally swimming from Morocco to Ceuta would surely raise all alarms in Europe. The “territorial integrity” of an EU member state has been violated, the safety and security of European borders compromised, the invasion of Europe by Islamists continues, European culture is at risk. Except it was not. Most of the 70,000 people…
Yves here. Just wait for the hysteria about progressives (who will be called socialists and worse) to shift to a higher register as a result of El-Sayed’s probable success. The Hill has made a call too: El-Sayed beats Stevens to take on Rogers in battleground Michigan Senate race. Even though experts expect a very hard…
One of the consistent themes of military history has been the reduction of decision latency. Engineers use this term to describe the interval between observation and action. From runners and mounted messengers to semaphore, telegraph, radio, radar, satellite communications, artificial intelligence, and autonomous weapons, successive generations of military technology have sought to compress this interval….
[Today’s Iran war, as usual, fired a bit early. Please return at 7:30 AM EDT for a final version] As most of you know well, Trump again TACOed over the weekend, calling off a loudly-broadcast, supposedly monster attack on Iran at the very last minute, in yet another instance of Trump being influenced by the…
