The Post-Partisan Emporium

  The Vanishing Point Where improbably becomes impossible RADIO FAR SIDE Let’s perform a little thought experiment today. I apologize that this will involve some math. Believe me, I got a headache doing it, so bear with me as I regale you with my Quadrivium training (Reasoning with Numbers). Imagine a sphere with a radius of 150 yards, with the center point located on a roof (dangerously sloped of course). The sphere represents everything within the field of view of a shooter, and the radius is the distance of the target from the center point. Let’s convert that into a circumference (C) measured in feet (ft) (metric fans, you’re on your own): 1 yard=3 ft, so thus 150 yards=150×3=450 ft Now, C=2π×450, thus C=900π, with π≈3.14159 C≈900×3.14159=2827.43 ft At this point, we can project a 6-foot tall man onto the known circumference of our circle, at a distance of 450 ft. This becomes a simple ratio that is expressed in degrees of angular size relative to the circumf...

  The Politburo Tsarina Kamala's Last Task I am sure of three things: death, taxes, and the D party's subsequent choice for president being worse for America than the prior one. Now they're going for a death thrust with cackling. TRYGVE E. WIGHDAL Even Batman Would Drink Here In 1994, I was invited to give a small talk at the University of Texas, Austin, titled “How I Became the Enemy of the State #1.” It was nice, intimate, which is to say neither I nor my small country were interesting enough to attract any significant crowd, but, as Orson Welles once said, “You only need one,” so you have to give full attention and respect to anyone willing to listen to you, no matter how small the gathering. It also has its advantages. After the talk and discussion, we went to the Dean’s home for a party. At one moment, a friend, a professor at UT at the time, said we had to leave if we wanted to drink; the esteemed guests should not see us wasted. So we went. In a bar near that famous ...

  China Has Achieved Escape Velocity: It Is Now Unstoppable PEPE ESCOBAR The 21 st  century is shaping up to be the Asian, Eurasian, Chinese century. The four-day, twice-a-decade plenum of the Communist Party of China that took place last week in Beijing,  designing an economic road map all the way to 2029,  was a stunning affair in more ways than one. Let’s start with continuity – and stability. There’s no question after the plenum that Xi Dada, or The Big Panda, will stay on the helm until 2029 – the end of the current five-year economic drive. And if Xi is healthy enough, he stays up to 2035: the fateful and uber game-changing target year for China to exhibit a GDP per capita of $30,000, with massive around-the-world reverberations. Here we see the confluence between the progression of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” and the defining contours if not of a Pax Sinica, at least of the non-Hegemon-centric,  multi-nodal  world (italics mine). The pro...