Thought

Robert A. Heinlein

Sharing

There is one thing no head of a country can know, and that is: how good is his intelligence system? He finds out only by having it fail him.

Robert A. Heinlein, The Puppet Masters (1951), Chapter 1 (p. 7, Signet (#W7339)).

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

March Sanity
Sharing“A public debate on the merits of a measure can reveal …
Democracy on the Sly
SharingMayor Sly James loves his city: Kansas City, Missouri. He dreams …
Seeing What’s There
Sharing“One can squint and see ballot measures as a kind of …
What’s Love Got to Do With It?
Sharing“One of the great myths in official Washington,” writes pollster …
No Right to Defend Your Rights
SharingYou have no right as a voter to defend your interests …

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 »

Eternal Vigilance
SharingThere have always been prophets of doom. Thomas Malthus predicted …
Senator DeMint for Term Limits
SharingYes, we can term-limit the Congress. I’m not saying it will …
The Yellow and White Lines
SharingIf I’ve heard it one million times, I’ve heard it …
We already have term limits, you moron…
SharingUhmmm,Yeah. So…how’s that Been working out for you? (Public Approval Rating …
Authority and Accountability
SharingRoll, Founding Fathers, roll over. The situation with Congress is grave. …

Il Duce Cuomo
SharingA federal judge has ruled that the National Rifle Association …
Who Benefits From Our Fears?
Sharing“Think of the children!” I have daughters. And neighbors, nephews, nieces, …
The Anti-Orange Man Cult
SharingHow do you know you are in an end-time cult? When …
Is Denmark Socialist?
SharingFirst… some definitions: Socialism advocates the public ownership (or control) of business …
Packing
Sharing“Are you proposing taking away their guns?” “I am,” replied former …

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.