Congress often passes laws that have unintended consequences. The sociologist Robert K. Merton wrote a paper about the subject as early as 1936. Some of unintended consequences are serendipitous, but others are negative or perverse. It seems that Congress has a way of introducing negative or perverse consequences.
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 was designed [...]
(This is an edited post of May 31, as corrected by Kent Pryor, to whom I am very grateful.)
I just call it the Fiske curve because I don’t have any other name for it. Others may have found it and named it something else. In any case the curve sets out principles worth remembering about [...]
It’s over. My ninth book is on the market and I can turn to more important things, such as my tenth book. And Ham radio. And maybe, politics.
My ninth book, Ploughshares into Swords, is about WWII—how civilians and California Institute of Technology (Caltech) helped win the war. A friend of mine was also a [...]
Tagged anti-matter, Baikonur, Caltech, Carl Anderson, China Lake, CIA, FDR, Ham Radio, Khrushchev, NASA, NSA, Pasadena, Ploughshares, Swords, WWIIAlmost no one knows today that the space race with the USSR during Cold War conditions was not much of a race. NASA had a man stationed in the Soviet Baikonur Cosmodrome from about 1963 through 1971.
NASA’s man was a space medicine scientist whom Premier Khrushchev allowed to enter the USSR to consult with [...]
What’s amazing to me is that even today no one knows. NASA actually had a scientist in and out of Russia from 1962 to 1971 during the space race and the Cold War. Yes, Mr. Krushchev actually allowed a space medical scientist from the US to help keep alive the Russian cosmonauts.
My research on the [...]
A friend called me today and asked if I wanted to go for a cup of coffee. I did, because I have been researching the Soviet space program all day for the Cold War period. It is background for a book I am writing.
Always unpredictable, I had an iced tea instead of coffee. While we [...]
The humorist Calvin Trillin was quoted as saying, “In modern America, anyone who attempts to write satirically about the events of the day finds it difficult to concoct a situation so bizarre that it may not come to pass while his article is still on the presses.”
Calvin was not especially interested in science. But if [...]
It is amusing to watch and read the Media reporting on Global Warming. The latest position is that we should all believe in “Warming Caused by Humans” because of scientific consensus. That is, a number of scientists have agreed that the earth is warming, that the warming is caused by human activity and that the [...]
One of the more interesting parts of writing something original is doing the research. Yesterday I got a call from the NSA, a super-secret intelligence agency. They wanted to tell me about the work they had done in response to a request I made.
I have been writing about someone who was involved in the space [...]
Having held my breath for nine days while I looked for repercussions from a story in my local newspaper, I have finally decided to exhale because it appears there will be no follow-up story, no repercussions, and no retractions.
The story was about our oceans between during the years 2003 and 2005. These enormous bodies of [...]