December 2013 brought two important anniversaries for GPS, a technology that has changed the world, yet both milestones have gone unnoticed in the media. The Pentagon authorized GPS development 40 years ago on Dec. 17, 1973. If GPS were a…
Longer Reads
Big(ger) Government
Conservative Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., has found an issue on which he favors bigger government–or at least taller government. Issa, who chairs the House committee that oversees the District of Columbia, wants to relax the Height Act of 1910, which…
Thanksgiving Day Shoppers Should Go Cold Turkey
Black Friday’s days are numbered. It had a nice run before having to share the spotlight with Cyber Monday. But surely we all saw this coming. For years, the “official kickoff of Christmas shopping,” “the busiest retail day of the…
“Gravity” Highlights Space Debris Issue
More than twenty-four hours after watching the new movie “Gravity” in IMAX 3-D, images from the film continue hurtling periodically through my mental machinery, and like the orbital debris that drives the plot, they keep puncturing and shredding whatever task…
Patients vs. Impatience
One word reveals a lot about the underlying problem with our health care industry—the one its suppliers use to describe their retail customers: patients. I recently opened my mailbox to find a marketing piece from a nearby primary care facility…
The (Watery) Margin of Victory
Book Review: WAR ON THE WATERS: THE UNION & CONFEDERATE NAVIES, 1861-1865 by James M. McPherson UNC Press, 2012 Pulitzer Prize-winning author James M. McPherson begins War on the Waters: The Union & Confederate Navies, 1861-1865 with a quote…
To Kill or Not to Kill?, part 2
This is an update to my post, To Kill or Not to Kill?, from Aug. 12: News just broke that a jury took less than two hours to recommend the death penalty for Maj. Nidal Hasan, convicted of killing 13…
The Privacy of Rooftops
C-SPAN’s Washington Journal broadcast an excellent program on the “Domestic Use of Drones” coinciding with AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems 2013, a trade show in Washington, DC, sponsored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. On display were the latest in…
To Kill or Not to Kill?
Every time I get comfortable with the idea of abolishing the death penalty—an expensive, flawed practice that kills an unknown number of innocent people—along comes someone who commits a crime so heinous and who is so obviously guilty beyond doubt…
Can Twitter Rescue Diplomatic Bombast?
In 1960, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gave a speech at the United Nations, where he banged his shoe and declared, “We will bury you!” Although later deemed a mistranslation of what was closer in meaning to a vow that communism…