Sunday Reader – By Glynn Wilson – KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The east-facing window in this humble abode was enshrouded in fog the first thing Sunday morning, not the famous smoke you sometimes see in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina. Since it’s National Public Sleeping Day and the weather was not conducive to…
Editor’s Note: We are happy to report that the new Biden administration has begun to restore factual email announcements from federal agencies to allow news organizations to once again provide reliable information to readers. For four years under the previous administration, all the public relations functions of federal agencies had been coopted by Trump loyalists…
Editor’s Note: This is the third in a three part series on the death of the American Dream and the one last chance we have to save it. Part I: Death of an Empire – Did Trump’s Reality Show Presidency Finally Kill the American Dream? Part II: The Early Days of the Internet – What…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – The view of Mount Mitchell is obscured by rain clouds and fog on this Saturday afternoon in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Ken Burns is talking about Hank Williams as “the epitome of country music” on “Live From Here” on National Public Radio out of Ashville, North Carolina.…
By Glynn Wilson – There’s nothing like a global health pandemic to make people wish they had paid attention in science class, or at least voted for politicians who believed in providing health care to people. Now maybe even President Donald Trump at least privately wishes he had not been so hasty in firing and…
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II: Case Studies — Donald Trump and George Wallace – “He who does not oppose evil, commands it to be done,” the great artist Leonardo Da Vinci once said. By…
Editor’s Note – One day in 2017, during Trump’s first summer as president, I was on my way back from covering a protest on the U.S. Capitol lawn when the Republicans in Congress were still trying to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. As I took my seat on the D.C. Metro…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – MOUNT MITCHELL, N.C. — Literary history is filled with stories about motivated people climbing up mountains for inspiration. Moses supposedly hiked up Mount Sinai and came back with the Ten Commandments. George Mallory told the New York Times in 1923 that he climbed Mount Everest “because it’s…
By Glynn Wilson – PHILADELPHIA, Pa. — When Benjamin Franklin founded the American Philosophical Society in 1743, 33 years before he signed the Declaration of Independence as a member of the Continental Congress, he recognized the need for an organization that would bring together the brightest thinkers of the day to share their scientific experiments…
Staff report… Most people think university professors – especially those with tenure – are safe from political interference in their research fields. They would be wrong – especially in state universities, according to a recent story just out from Washington State. Washington’s leading expert on wolves, Professor Rob Wielgus, learned this lesson the hard way…
By Patrick Lynch – In spite of restrictions by the Trump administration not to talk about global warming or using the terminology of “climate change,” the scientists and public relations folks at NASA have come up with a way to continue the research and show us the results. NASA research shows that permafrost — permanently frozen…
By Glynn Wilson – Homo sapiens have impacted the Earth’s climate to such a pervasive extent that scientists are urging the ushering in of a new geological era. We have now left the Holocene epoch and entered the Anthropocene, according to a new study out Thursday from the journal Science. The Holocene epoch, which scientists…
By Glynn Wilson – The year 2014 ranks as Earth’s warmest on record since 1880, according to two separate analyses by scientists from NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The 10 warmest years in the instrumental record, with the exception of 1998, have now occurred since 2000, they say in a release just out…
By Glynn Wilson – Scientists now say 2013 tied with 2009 and 2006 for the seventh warmest year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures, according to a new report out from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). With the exception of 1998, the 10 warmest years in the 134-year record…
