Thought

George Orwell

Sharing

Man is not a Yahoo, but he is rather like a Yahoo and needs to be reminded of it from time to time.

George Orwell, review of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, in New English Weekly (November 14, 1935), referring to the bestial human counterparts to the noble horse creatures, the Houyhnhnms, in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726, 1735).

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

What Does Bloomberg Stand … Fore!
SharingHey! I’ve got something good to say about the anti-democratic …
Video: Music Man?
SharingLast year at this time, I was in Omaha, Nebraska, testifying …
A Law to Be Named Later
SharingNevada’s legislators have long desired to do something that they …
Politicians Revolt Against Voters
“[C]urrently, in the state of Arkansas, out-of-state special interest groups …
Wisconsin’s Kumbaya Moment
SharingWith all our divisive politics, who would’ve thought it would …

Abolish. Or Set in Stone
November 13, 2024
Paul Jacob knows what to do with hypocrisy on at …Read More »
Destroying Dane Farming
November 12, 2024
Paul Jacob on Europe’s ongoing suicide over “greenhouse gases.”Read More »
Disaster Relief Pass-Over
November 11, 2024
Paul Jacob on partisanship at FEMA.Read More »
Exemplary Rejections
November 8, 2024
Paul Jacob celebrates voters in three states who protected their …Read More »
Not Now
November 7, 2024
Paul Jacob on political lessons to be learned — or …Read More »

Cool Car and Hot Coffee for President Cool
SharingThe President of the United States claims to be very …
Term Limits for Thee
Last Sunday, former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, now …
Meet the Personal Interest
“Poll after poll finds American voters believing the country is …
Living on Markwayne Logic
SharingJust months ago, Congressman Markwayne Mullin (R‑Okla.) made headlines by …
Term Limits for Cuba?
SharingYou can’t cheer some victories — they just don’t seem real. I mean, …

Bernie’s Slippery Definition of Democratic Socialism
SharingBernie Sanders has always given a comically slippery definition of democratic socialism. For …
Who’ll Stop the Wars?
Sharing“Why were you the lone voice out there going after …
The Whys Behind the Whats
Sharing“[H]ow quickly our differences worldwide would vanish,” said Ronald Reagan …
Don’t Think Different
SharingWhat do we know for sure about the resignation of …
Who Benefits From Our Fears?
Sharing“Think of the children!” I have daughters. And neighbors, nephews, nieces, …

On this day in 1833, Denison Olmsted was alerted by his neighbors to something truly amazing, a night sky filled with shooting stars.

Not just a one or two or a dozen or a hundred: 72,000 or more per hour. Though recognizing where among the constellations meteors came from was ancient knowledge, it had not been recorded by modern-era scientists, at least in this case. What Olmsted noticed was that the meteors were coming from one point in the sky, the constellation Leo. This regular meteor event is now called the Leonid meteor stream.

In the morning, Olmsted wrote a brief report on the meteor storm for the New Haven Daily Herald newspaper, which elicited correspondence from around the country, thus beginning a social storm, in a sense: crowd-sourced science.