Search results for: “amazon”
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A Rebirth of Passenger Rail?
Color me skeptical — but intrigued. Harvard professor John Stilgoe advances the argument that trains are back… if not quite yet, then in the near future. In “Train Time: Railroads and the Imminent Reshaping of the United States, he argues that “an economic and cultural tsunami is about to transform the United States. … Return…
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Racial Rohrschach Test
Here is the flier that set emotions aflame at Mary Washington University, according to anonymous comments on my previous post on this topic, “More Racism on Campus. What Am I Missing Here?” The photograph captures a moment after the 2000 Michigan State University basketball team, showing a jubilant coach Tom Izzo embracing an emotional Mateen…
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Fox at the Forum
Former Mexican President Vincente Fox opened his address to the Richmond Forum last night with an encomium to the Juans, the Marias, the Joses and all the other brave Mexicans who have immigrated to the United States to work hard and build a better life for themselves and their families. It was a heart-felt and…
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Who Rules Virginia?
In the early 1970s Eugene Ruyle, my Marxist anthropology professor (yes, he really was a self-avowed Marxist) assigned a book, “Who Rules America” by G. William Domhoff, which described the mechanisms by which business elites ruled the country. As one might expect, the book grotesquely over-simplified reality, but it contained elements of undeniable truth. As…
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Beware the Nerdocalypse
In the course of human evolution, first came hunting-gathering, then the agricultural revolution and then the industrial revolution. Arguably, the United States has evolved into a post-industrial society, though no one seems quite sure what to call it — perhaps the knowledge economy. But what comes after that? The Singularity, according to entrepreneur-author Ray Kurzweil…
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At Last, a Political Thriller that Cultural Conservatives Can Love
Not long ago I watched a piece of forgettable piece of Hollywood drivel in which the bad guys, a bunch of corporate tycoons and rogue CIA goons, were undermining democracy and killing people with impunity. Sigh. Five years after 9/11, the lefties in La La Land have yet to produce a thriller in which the…
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We’re No. 1! We’re No. 1! (But Don’t Look Behind — The Competition is Gaining)
Forbes Magazine has once again ranked Virginia as the “best state for business,” but the business pub declares that No. 5, Washington — home to Microsoft, Amazon.com, Starbucks and Boeing — is “the big story.” Washington, whose tagline is, “Innovation is in our nature,” moved up seven notches last year. As for Virginia, here’s what…
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The High Cost of Irrationality
George Mason University’s Don Boudreaux offers some topical examples of irrational economic and political thinking, one related to this Wall Street Journal op-ed on environmental Catch-22s in Washington state, and the other, a Robert Samuelson column on price gouging and global warming. His general thesis: When the personal material cost, at the time of individual…
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Who Will Gather the News? Shake-up at the T-D
Style Weekly has the details of the long-rumored editorial shake-up at the Richmond Times-Dispatch: two deputy managing editors laid off, the shuttering of the South Boston bureau, the scrapping of Mark Holmberg’s column, and various reassignments of responsibility. In a nod to the increasing importance of digital media, reports Greg A Lohr, “the newspaper is…
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Bwana Books
In case you missed it, Bwana over at Renaissance Ruminations has launched his “Fall 2006 Virginia Blogosphere Book Fair.” It’s fun — go visit. See what other bloggers are reading. I was astounded to see that the person whose reading list most closely replicates my own is Lowell Feld at Raising Kaine. Of all people!…
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State Climatologists: The Last Bastion Against Global-Warming Orthodoxy?
Patrick Michaels, Virginia’s state climatologist, is not alone in questioning global warming hysteria. He has allies among other state climatologists in departing from the putative “consensus” among climatologists regarding the severity and urgency of the global warming crisis. Now, according to the Washington Post, the “irregular system” of state-supported offices of climatologists is coming under…
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Culture Wars in Loudoun County
Virginia’s cultural liberals and conservatives are locking horns again, this time in Loudoun County. The issue: R-rated movies in public libraries. The Board of Supervisors has a problem with spending public money to stock the library with R-rated titles, according to an article in the Washington Post. Civil libertarians are accusing the supervisors of something…
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SHOULD REALLY CHILL US ALL
Jim Bacon commented in response to our post “ENERGY INDEPENDENCE OF SUSTAINABILITY:” “The prospect of Brazilians achieving “energy independence” at the expense of accelerating the clear cutting of the Amazonian rain forest is something that should chill us all.” He is right of course, but if that is chilling, how about today’s WaPo? On the…