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By now, we all know the Cliff Notes version of American’s founding: Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, the colonists defeated the British at Yorktown and Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Adams and Franklin wrote the Constitution, which the 13 colonies/states ratified enthusiastically. As an antidote to those cliché histories, I read a couple of good books on the period, a history and a biography.   The history book was “ Freedom around the globe: A world history of the American Revolution” by Sarah M.S Pearsall. The through-line of this book is that the “American Revolution” was one theater of a global war that also involved British colonies in Canadian North America, the Caribbean, South America Gibraltar and South Asia. And the combatants also included France and Spain. As Pearsall makes clear, Britain lost the American Revolution for reasons familiar to historians of empire—they simply exhausted their resources. By the battle of Yorktown, Cornwallis was fielding a wea...

Had he passed away in 2016, the mourning for him would have been universal. Someone might have named an airport, or a building, for him.   But the last decade  did  happen. And we can’t look past that. We can’t pretend that the “real” Lindsey Graham was the guy before 2016 and everything that’s happened since is just an unfortunate unpleasantness from which polite people should avert their eyes.   The Trump-era Lindsey Graham was the real Lindsey Graham, too. And that matters.   ~Jonathan V. Last

For the last eight years we lived in St. Louis, we had rooftop solar. Ameren paid half the cost, and we got a 30% tax write-off on the rest. The 22 panels only exceeded consumption for a couple months a year. The total savings didn’t pay off the investment. No matter, we did our part to combat global warming in a state where >70% of electricity was generated from coal. Solar options have proliferated since we got involved: “ Plug-in solar , also called balcony or DIY solar, has taken off in Europe, especially in Germany, where perhaps   4 million households  have installed systems that can be   purchased from places like Ikea . Customers buy small panels, typically about the size of half a ping-pong table, then plug them into an electrical outlet. Energy flows from the panels into the home to power up appliances.   Set up   can be measured in minutes. “The units, which come with an inverter, range in capacity, typically between 200 and 1,200 watts, supplying ...

Americans, once members of a proudly literate society, read much less than they used to. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, which conducts the most comprehensive survey of the nation’s reading habits,  fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022 . Only 38 percent read a novel or short story. A study analyzing 236,000 responses to the American Time Use Survey found that the  proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023 . (The study looked at people who had read a book, magazine, or newspaper; listened to an audiobook; or read an e-book.) Gambling has become a more common leisure activity than reading a book: Last year, 57 percent of Americans placed a bet. The decline in reading cuts across age groups, gender, and education levels. Even the demographics that traditionally read the most—retirees, women, and college graduates—have seen a collapse.   ~  R...

You probably have read about increasing reports of violent and potentially life-threatening diarrhea caused by cyclospora in multiple states. Cyclospora isn’t new, but the Trump administration stopped tracking it. “As of July 1, the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) program has reduced surveillance to just two pathogens: salmonella and Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC), a spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told NBC News. “Before July, the program had been tracking infections caused by six additional pathogens: campylobacter, cyclospora, listeria, shigella, vibrio and Yersinia. Some of them can lead to severe or life-threatening illnesses, particularly for newborns and people who are pregnant or have weakened immune systems. “Monitoring for the six pathogens is no longer required for the 10 states that participate in the program, though those states aren’t precluded from conducting surveillance on their own.” In what sense does blin...

Green Mountain College in Poultney VT closed in 2019 due to insufficient funds. Now, a traveling Pentecostal preacher from Florida has announced on Facebook (from Disneyland) that he’s gonna make it into a Christian fundamentalist college in the least religious state in the nation. The whiskey magnate Raj Bhakta bought the campus in 2020 and has donated it to Tommie Zito, a Florida evangelist who plans to turn the campus into the gospel-preaching Z University. “While the deal may be a good one for Zito and his team of fellow evangelists ,   Bhakta estimated in previous reports that it would cost   $200 million   to restore the campus — which includes dormitories and dining spaces, athletic fields, a gymnasium, and a pool — along with at least $1 million annually in operating costs.” What’s the business model? “ Asked how he would pay to keep the campus going, he said “it’s a faith journey.” In addition to targeting large donors, he’s relying on businesses, churches, and “...