The End - For Now

None of the authors at this blog are posting any more. We might be back someday, but I don't know when that will be.

Comments are closed, because all we are getting is spam.

Cheryl can be found at Nuclear Diner.

Bits and Pieces - March 6, 2015

This is as good a description of the situation in the Middle East and what America can do about it as I've seen. 

Long read on what we've learned from the climate hiatus, what that tells us about science, and why it doesn't mean that global warming has stopped.

A bit of family history that has some relevance to Russia's relations with its neighbors.

Antiquities, museums, how we view the past, and ISIS.

Whole Foods and the scent of death.

Interactive feature on global numbers of nuclear weapons.

Bits and Pieces - February 15, 2015

Following up on that comment of President Obama's on the Crusades: the first victims of the first crusade were Jews. And then they took Christian Constantinople out in the Fourth Crusade. Kinda like ISIS, those folks.

Transcript of James Comey's speech about law enforcement and minorities.

The media continues its long slide into rumor without fact-checking.

We do voluntary, poorly-enforced treaties all the time. There's reason to believe a similar climate treaty would work too.

Old postcards from Estonia. Reval is modern-day Tallinn, Dorpat is Tartu.

"What Russia Wants." I wish we knew. There are a lot of signals with a lot of possible interpretations. This is a pretty good article, though.

How Vladimir Putin paralyzes his neighbors with "frozen conflicts."

Bits and Pieces - January 21, 2015

Why Vladimir Putin should be invited to the Auschwitz memorial ceremony. Russia needs to confront all parts of its past.

France is proposing a limitation on United Nations Security Council vetoes. It's unlikely to go far and narrowly defined, but a step toward thinking differently about the Security Council's inability to act.

Was the civil rights movement a revolution? If a revolution means a major shift in power, yes. But not completed yet.

The best critique of the response to the State of the Union address, both in general and this latest one.

First-person narrative of the separatist tendencies in the religious right. I'm not sure I agree with all of it, but parts are persuasive.

When Americans ate horse meat.

Bits and Pieces - January 7, 2015

What is a European? The growing pains of the European Union. What they are trying to do is much more difficult than the United States' union of colonies in the 18th century. And that took a while to work out.

Afghans are being urged to take surnames. Which are a relatively recent innovation, even for Europe.

Nonviolent Conflicts in 2014 You May Have Missed Because They Were Not Violent. We don't see the conflicts that don't happen and the ones in which people aren't shooting at each other.

Likewise, do we really live in dangerous times or does it just feel that way? Some of both, more of the second. Which can lead to real danger. But feelings count for a lot.