Neil deGrasse Tyson Is a Nice Man
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on August 13th, 2014 11:08 pm by HL
Neil deGrasse Tyson Is a Nice Man
Froma Harrop, RealClearPolitics
When I first encountered Neil deGrasse Tyson, I thought, “What a nice man.” He was on the TV screens at New York’s Hayden Planetarium, where he’s director, urging us to behold the wonder of — to use the biblical term — the heavens. That impression only grew on seeing his television show, “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.” Here he bursts with elation over the great scientific breakthroughs, guiding us into the subject with the kindly enthusiasm of the gifted teacher. So imagine my surprise to learn that Tyson has become the object of not just mild disapproval but loathing on the political…
Where Have all the Entrepreneurs Gone (cont.)?
Robert Samuelson, RealClearPolitics
WASHINGTON — American businesses are aging, I wrote last week, and a sharp decline in startup companies is a big reason. As the share of young firms shrinks, the surviving companies are naturally older — and this may have huge ramifications for the economy. Established companies may create fewer jobs and innovations than do young businesses. So, what’s happened to America’s vaunted entrepreneurs? The experts I contacted last week had a uniform answer: no one knows. When you write “no one knows,” someone inevitably pops up claiming to know. I shouldn’t have been surprised a few days later to…
The Crisis of American Exceptionalism
Marc Dunkelman, RealClearPolitics
Beneath the barrage of depressing headlines in the nation’s newspapers today lurks a more ominous question: is America in decline? In a recent Time magazine poll, more than 80 percent of Americans expressed a belief that the last several years had seen the United States take a step back. The oft-repeated promise of the American Dream—that the future will be better than the past, and that the next generation will have it better than those who came before—now seems increasingly far-fetched. It’s not difficult to understand why. As one analyst recently pointed out, not…
The West’s Gaza
Jonah Goldberg, RealClearPolitics
The hawks (including me) were wrong about a lot, but some got one thing right. It’s going to be a long war. In the early days after 9/11 there was a lot of talk about a “clash of civilizations” and a long “existential struggle” facing the West. I once asked the late Christopher Hitchens what he felt on that terrible day, and he said he felt no small amount of joy. Not for the suffering and death, but for the fact that the West finally had been awakened to the terrible but necessary struggle before us. And for a time, many liberals bought into the idea that…
