Thought

Frédéric Bastiat

Competition is merely the absence of oppression.
Frédéric Bastiat, Economic Harmonies (posthumous, 1850), par. 10.4.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Rocky Mountain Facts
SharingNorma Anderson is one of the politician-plaintiffs challenging Colorado’s Taxpayer …
The John Lilburne Award
SharingJohn Lilburne and Eric Ehst could never meet: They belong …
Fast-Moving Planet
SharingThis presidential campaign is about change, but it’s outside of …
To Do Item #1
It’s been a while. In the early 1990s, citizens in a slew …
Big Brother Plays in Traffic
SharingOne of my favorite uncles used to jokingly tell us …

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 »

Tupperware Really Locks You In
SharingPlastics: yesterday’s future, today’s convenience. Reading a report from Jefferson City, Missouri, …
Power Abuse
SharingAt the core of sexual harassment and misconduct is an …
Term Limits: Let’s Keep ’em
SharingFormer Clinton Treasury secretary Larry Summers proposes that we switch …
Is He Serious?
SharingIllinois Gov. Bruce Rauner ran for his state’s highest office …
Video: California Term Limit Scam
SharingCAUTION: A carefully concocted measure designed to fool the voters. Pass …

Scientists for Censorship
Sharing“You have signed the death warrant for science,” scientist Peter …
Il Duce Cuomo
SharingA federal judge has ruled that the National Rifle Association …
The Ominous Linkages
SharingWhat does a 16-year-old Swedish girl have in common with a popular …
Smash the Duopoly
SharingWhen Donald Trump called our country’s electoral process a “rigged …
Overkill … for Your Health
SharingNews stories about death- and illness-by-vaping keep hitting us. But …

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.