Monthly Archives: January 2018

Is America Due for Another Economic Crash? (w/Guest Richard Wolff)

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The Ring Of Fire network showcased the interview Is America Due for Another Economic Crash? (w/Guest Richard Wolff).

Thom is joined by Dr. Richard Wolff to discuss the possibility of a new economic crash. 



I don’t see how there can be any doubt that the Fed’s efforts to stave off the worsening of the crash of 2008/2009 has led to a stock market bubble that is not supported by the underlying economy of this country.  When the support for the bubble is being withdrawn, we can only be concerned with the possible consequences.  As Wolff points out, there could be countervailing actions taken to prevent the normal consequences of such a withdrawal, but in the current political climate, such actions are unlikely to be taken.


    

    
                                    

                                
                                                            
                                                                    
                                
                                                            
                                                                    

                                        
    

              

          
The Biggest Secret: James Risen on Life as a NY Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror
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Democracy Now has the interview The Biggest Secret: James Risen on Life as a NY Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror.



In the story, Jim Risen gives a personal account of his struggles to publish significant stories involving national security in the post-9/11 period and how both the government and the top Times editors suppressed his reporting on stories, including the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, for which he ultimately would win The New York Times a Pulitzer Prize in 2006.




    





The continuation of the interview is published as a second article How the NY Times & U.S. Government Worked Together to Suppress James Risen’s Post-9/11 Reporting.



    



I can see that I am quite justified in no longer having any respect for the journalistic integrity of The New York Times management. I have a tough time understanding why that newspaper has any respect from knowledgeable people.  In the end, Risen says of his former employer that he thinks they have learned some lessons on not giving in to government requests to suppress stories as easily they once did.  I think he is going far too easy on them as The New York Times continues to press the phony story of how Russia meddled in our 2016 election.


Here is the link to the article that is the subject of the above interview, the Risen article in The Intercept –  The Biggest Secret: My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror


    

    
                                    

                                
                                                            
                                                                    

                                        
    

              

          
A Revolutionary New Type of Lens Focuses All The Colours of The Rainbow Into a Single Point
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Science Alert has the article A Revolutionary New Type of Lens Focuses All The Colours of The Rainbow Into a Single Point. 



A brand new type of lens called a metalens has just passed a major hurdle. A metalens is a flat surface that use nanostructures to focus light, and it could change optics forever by replacing the traditional bulky, curved lenses we know.



This was an interesting read, but the following stopped me in my tracks.



Making a metalens like this is so tricky because different wavelengths of light move through materials at different speeds. That leads to focusing errors known as chromatic aberrations, which traditional lenses get around through curved surfaces.



And here I thought that lenses used curved surfaces as a way of changing the magnification of an image.  In other words the curved surface is what makes it a lens.  I went to WikiPedia to see what it had to say in the article Chromatic aberration.



There exists a point called the circle of least confusion, where chromatic aberration can be minimized.[6] It can be further minimized by using an achromatic lens or achromat, in which materials with differing dispersion are assembled together to form a compound lens.



This is the explanation I imagined.  Of course, the Wikipedia has much more detail and talks about other techniques of correcting chromatic aberration.


I just think this is an example of what happens when an author with a tenuous understanding of a scientific topic tries to simplify an article to explain science to other people with a tenuous understanding of the topic.  Don’t treat as gospel what you read in a news medium that has the word “science” in its name.  Actually, such a medium may be no more trustworthy than a medium that makes no claim to be about science.