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There is a lot of anger among the leftists in the wake of the re-election of Donald Trump. Many of them are so afflicted with TDS that their anger often seems to bleed into blind rage. So what to do? Well, The Atlantic magazine has not the cure but what they claim is the prescription. Namely they suggest reading from a recommended book list. The problem is that their book suggestions seem to be like pouring high octane fuel on the TDS fire. Ruth Madievsky made her book suggestions on Wednesday in "What to Read If You’re Angry About the...

Of late, many people — especially politicians, pundits and celebrities on the left — have been engaged in agonizing introspection, trying to ascertain why the election has seemed to tip towards former President Donald Trump. In my estimation, much of the reasoning comes down to an example of “life imitating art.” In this case, such “art” being the 1986 movie “Back to School,” starring Rodney Dangerfield. Now, while some of the entitled, entrenched elites on the left might ignorantly and snobbishly scoff at such a theory — part of the reason they may soon be on the outside looking in...

The headline in the Scottish Daily Express succinctly summarizes the reaction to a recent invention by Australian Dr. Philip “Death” Nitschke: “Outrage as scientist backs gas chamber ‘death pod’ scheme for Scotland.” Nitschke has become notorious over the past several years due to his high-profile promotion of his “do-it-yourself death pods,” airtight capsule-shaped pods in which the suicidal can seal themselves and release a nitrogen gas that will knock them out in 60 seconds and kill them within 10. It is not as swift a death as the lethal injection method but does have the benefit of ensuring that other...

It would perhaps be around this time in 1863 that a Southern planter is arrayed for hanging in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge This “greatest American short story … a flawless example of American genius” (according to Kurt Vonnegut) was 1890 product of puissant wordsmith Ambrose Bierce. In this non-chronological story, Peyton Farquhar, “a well to do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family,” is entrapped by a Union spy purporting to be a Confederate agent to attempt an act of sabotage in the face of a hanging warning issued by the Union army. It can be...

An international team of researchers from University College Dublin (UCD) and University of Saskatchewan, Canada, have observed 'proton-hopping' movement in a high-pressure form of ice (Ice VII lattices). Ordinary water ice is known as Ice I, while Ice VII is a cubic crystalline form of ice which can be formed from liquid water above 3 GPa (30,000 atmospheres) by lowering its temperature to room temperature, or by decompressing heavy water (D2O) Ice VI below 95 K. Ice VII has a simple structure of two inter-penetrating, and effectively independent, cubic-ice sub-lattices, and is stable across a wide-ranging region above 2 GPa....

Today's Quotefall Puzzle features a quote by Kurt Vonnegut. Click puzzle (or click here) for full size rendition, then use your browser's print command to print puzzle. Kurt Vonnegut was an American writer who wrote Slaughterhouse Five. Although his politics veered to socialism, sometimes even Leftists can find some people can go too far. All hints, along with the answer, are provided in the first reply comment below, using filtered font to prevent accidental spoilers. Please refrain from disclosing the full answer in comments to prevent spoilers.To solve the puzzle: Enter the letters in the top half (letter columns) of the puzzle...

Trapped in the rigid structure of diamonds formed deep in the Earth’s crust, scientists have discovered a form of water ice that was not previously known to occur naturally on our planet. The finding, published Thursday in Science, represents the first detection of naturally occurring ice-VII ever found on Earth. And as sometimes happens in the scientific process, it was discovered entirely by accident. Ice-VII is about one and a half times as dense as the regular ice we put in our drinks and skate on in winter, and the crystalline structure of its atoms is different as well. In...

My review: This book is fascinating on so many levels but one of the most interesting, and unexpected, is the government-science collusion in the study and manipulation of WEATHER and climate. Bernard Vonnegut, Kurt's brother was a scientist at GE. Kurt worked there in the public relations department (as did later Ronald Reagan). The author herself never claims this however, it is not hard to see the connection to this early government manipulation and hold over climate science and the origins of "climate change" came from government funded studies of weather by GE (General Electric) in the post war years....

The surprising discovery of "square ice" which forms at room temperature was made by an international team of researchers last week. The study was published in Nature by a team of scientists from UK and Germany led by Andre Geim of University of Manchester and G. Algara-Siller of University of Ulm. The accompanying review article was done by Alan Soper of Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in UK. "We didn't expect to find square ice ... We found there is something strange in terms of water going through [nanochannels]. It's going too fast. And you can't explain that by just imagining a...

A short film adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron, 2081 depicts a dystopian future in which, thanks to the 212th Amendment to the Constitution and the unceasing vigilance of the United States Handicapper General, everyone is "finally equal...." The strong wear weights, the beautiful wear masks and the intelligent wear earpieces that fire off loud noises to keep them from taking unfair advantage of their brains. It is a poetic tale of triumph and tragedy about a broken family, a brutal government, and an act of defiance that changes everything. Featuring an original score performed by the world-renowned Kronos Quartet...

So much of science fiction's core topics intersect with war, one way or the other. Rapid social change and technological innovation both get supercharged during wartime, and some of our greatest explorers are also warriors. So it's not surprising that many of science fiction's most well-known authors served in the military at some point — especially during the era when we had a compulsory draft. But how did serving in the military shape these writers' books? Here's a look at 15 of the authors who served in the armed forces, and how their work reflects that experience.

The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law, they were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else; nobody was better looking than anybody else; nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Elastic Water could eventually replace plastic, or be used in an environmentally-safe plastic. Bernama, a part of the Malaysian National News Agency, reports that Japanese scientists have created “elastic water." Developed at the Tokyo University, the new material consists mostly of water--95-percent--with an added two grams of clay and organic material. The resulting substance resembles jelly, but is extremely elastic and transparent. The invention was originally revealed last week in the latest issue of the Nature scientific magazine. According to the article, the new material is quite safe for the environment and humans, and may be a “long-term” tool in...

This movie looks really good.

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General. Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April, for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month...

I Love You, Madame Librarian By Kurt Vonnegut August 6, 2004 I, like probably most of you, have seen Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. Its title is a parody of the title of Ray Bradbury’s great science fiction novel, Fahrenheit 451. This temperature 451° Fahrenheit, is the combustion point, incidentally, of paper, of which books are composed. The hero of Bradbury’s novel is a municipal worker whose job is burning books. And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over...

Kurt Konnegut has died

ONE of the greatest living US writers has praised terrorists as "very brave people" and used drug culture slang to describe the "amazing high" suicide bombers must feel before blowing themselves up. Kurt Vonnegut, author of the 1969 anti-war classic Slaughterhouse Five, made the provocative remarks during an interview in New York for his new book, Man Without a Country, a collection of writings critical of US President George W. Bush. Vonnegut, 83, has been a strong opponent of Mr Bush and the US-led war in Iraq, but until now has stopped short of defending terrorism. But in discussing his...

FUTURE SOUNDTRACK FOR AMERICA Barsuk Records is set to release a fundraising CD compilation, titled future soundtrack for america, a joint project with MoveOn.org and Music For America, on August 10th. The compilation will include R.E.M.'s "The Final Straw (MoveOn mix)." McSweeney's Publishing is also releasing a book with similar fundraising goals that will include a copy of the CD; the future dictionary of america features contributions from an astounding group of almost 200 writers, from Paul Auster to Michael Chabon to Jonathan Franzen to Joyce Carol Oates to Kurt Vonnegut to Wendy Wasserstein. One hundred percent of the proceeds...

(I first submitted the following movie review to Amazon.com on May 20. On May 26, I resubmitted it. At 926 words, it is well under the site’s 1000-word limit, and I “bleeped” all foul language with dashes. And yet, Amazon’s politburo killed the review without explanation.) Waking the Dead is perfectly mediocre: 50 percent wonderful, and 50 percent dreadful. It tells of a man’s reaction to the mid-1970s political murder of the love of his life, a love whom he cannot bid farewell. Set during the early 1980s, we see flashbacks to his love affair, as in the present, while...