Stuff I find, stuff I think after finding it (or before).
Red Wine, Tartaric Acid, and the Secret of Superconductivity
Last year, physicists discovered that red wine can turn certain materials into superconductors. Now they’ve found that Beaujolais works best and think they know why.
YearLong Photograph of Toronto Skyline
(details in Toronto Star)
All the kvetching about the Presidency is one thing, but until we strip mine the professional grifters out of Congress, ain’t nothin’ gonna change, bro.
— In The Business Of Giving You The Business
In the modern era, it doesn’t make sense for a candidate to trek all over the country in a bus. If I may be blunt, citizens who change their political views after shaking hands with a candidate, or seeing him eat grits in a diner, probably shouldn’t be voting.
— Scott Adams: What If Government Were More Like an iPod?
What we are now seeing is not a showdown between the vast non-ideological middle-class and some rising Acai-swilling, assortatively-mating bobo aristocracy, but a standoff between rival elites. The tea party is a movement of relatively well-to-do, relatively religious citizens aroused by the conservative identity politics of a handful of elite right-wing opinion-makers who seek to unseat their liberal counterparts. It is a neat trick. Conservative elites pretend to be part of a marginalised cultural force while at the same time orchestrating an electoral bloodbath led by America’s least marginalised people. The fact that this is working so well tells us a lot about who the elites really are and where the power really lies.
— The tea party’s suspect populism: A war of elites
The Anti-Incumbent Election Myth
Or why you shouldn’t hold your breath waiting for a “triple flip” election
