Two weeks in a row and the theme is the ‘end is nigh’. Last week is was due to nothing more than the melancholy that the Blog Wyrm staff was feeling for the impending end of the football season. This week the theme is caused by a more serious event – the huge snow storm aiming at the east coast.
Living near the nation’s capitol is always an adventure in weirdness but when it snows that bar is raise to a whole new level. A mere 1 inch paralyzed the are on Wednesday night. So a storm ‘of epic proportions’ is sure to cause havoc in Washington D.C. metro region and who knows for how long. Ah well…, there is nothing to do but to wait it out and put one’s faith in the providence.
So since millions will be snow-bound this weekend, what better time is there to settle in and read some stimulating articles guaranteed to keep your brain warm even if your body is cold.
Common Cents revisits the whole China question. Several months ago, we warned that the ‘China Miracle’ is nothing but a facade. This month we are grimly gratified to see that we were correct as the facade is in full crumble mode. It would have been better had we been wrong, but no luck there. Maybe one day, all of us will take that old truism to heart that tells us that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
One of the most important intellectual tools available to us is the Socratic dialog. Chronicled by Plato, a these semi-dramatic short stories introduced logic and rational thinking to Western Civilization. Unfortunately, Socrates is no more, but Peter Kreeft has taken up the role of Plato and has imagined the dialog between Socrates and a host of historic figures as a rational way of exploring the ideas of the latter. This week Aristotle to Digital reviews Kreeft’s imagined meeting between that ancient Greek wiseman and Machiavelli, the author that controversial work on practical philosophy – The Prince.
The scattering cross section is more than a useful and ubiquitous physical concept, it is a many-headed hydra – being reinvented and tweaked in numerous places. As a result of the numerous and inter-related relations, finding the essential aspect of it is difficult. This week Under the Hood argues for a modification to the physical thinking surrounding the scattering cross section as a way of uniting everything under one umbrella concept.
Finally, About Comics has a few brief words to say about the new season of Agent Carter and the implications of a certain lapel pin as a clue to what the MCU has in mind.
Enjoy!