Thought

J. W. von Goethe

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If you treat an individual … as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.

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The Limits of Corruption
SharingAnother corrupt, term-limits-hating, careerist politician bites the dust. “Federal prosecutors say …
Golden State Voters
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Video: On the Road in South America, Part Two
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Who Rules the French?
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Finished Business
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Abolish. Or Set in Stone
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Paul Jacob knows what to do with hypocrisy on at …Read More »
Destroying Dane Farming
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Paul Jacob on Europe’s ongoing suicide over “greenhouse gases.”Read More »
Disaster Relief Pass-Over
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Exemplary Rejections
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Paul Jacob celebrates voters in three states who protected their …Read More »
Not Now
November 7, 2024
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Term Limits Now
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Like Zimbabwe
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Empowering Abuse of Power
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What Was I Thinking?
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Fast-Moving Planet
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Pigment Politics
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Systemic Refocusing
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My Privilege Isn’t White
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A Fake Mystery
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Inconvenient Cash?
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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.