Bill Angel

I agree, and I don't believe that the Confederate battle flag ever stood for the type of action that he took. It would have been more appropriate for him to have posed holding a Nazi swastika or Nazi SS banner than a flag of the Confederate military.

An excellent book that I just finished reading is Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos http://www.polaroidland.net/the-book/ Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid, was a role model for Steve Jobs, and the author develops a picture of Edwin Land that illustrates some of the similarities in how Land and Jobs ran their respective companies and promoted their products. The book isn't just about personalities however. The author makes an effort to explain to a general audience how the different systems for instant photography that Polaroid developed worked, as well as each of the systems' strengths and weaknesses.

See http://www.uefap.com/reading/exercise/ess3/alex2.htm

The melting point of copper is apparently RAISED by adding nickel to it.

This young woman is learning to solder at the National Electronics Museum near Baltimore. Perhaps a soldering expert can identify what kind of soldering iron she is using.

Interesting exposition about whether it is meaningful in physics to talk about particles possessing negative mass : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_mass

Research into "Cold Fusion" has been termed by some to be an example of "pathologic science".See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion

My understanding is that scientists can use supercomputers to successfully simulate the explosion of a hydrogen bomb. A bomb like that is a complex system in which quantum effects play an important role.

An excellent biography of Joseph Stalin is "Stalin, The Court of the Red Tsar" by Simon Montefiore The book discusses the brutal rivalries and corrupt activities that existed in Stalin's government/entourage. And according to one observer: See The Secret Speech and Putins Cult of Personality

One part of the transcript that you cited was particularly interesting: The transcript makes it sound as if the US Government thought that Saddam could be appeased in much the same way that Western European powers thought that Hitler could be appeased before war was actually declared when he invaded Poland.

He won't be put in jail for blasphemy, but he will likely end up on the same "hit list" that Anwar Sadat was put on. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Anwar_Sadat

By "misconception of greater significance" I was referring to two misconceptions that served as the basis for invading Iraq: that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and that he had links or an alliance with Al Qaeda. I would rate the second misconception to be of greater significance than the first (possession of WMDs). Others might disagree.

The USA declared war on Germany because the USA was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor and Germany was an ally of Japan. I think that the misconception of greater significance that propelled the USA into the war with Iraq was that Iraq was an ally of Al Qaeda, which had attacked the USA on 9/11. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein_and_al-Qaeda_link_allegations_timeline

The Allies destroyed Nazi Germany, set up a democracy in West Germany, and that country didn't descend into chaos the way Iraq did.

Historically most marriages were arranged by parents. This idea of people marrying for "love" is a recent development in human history.

It's also being argued that Mexican drug cartels rank as organizations equal in barbarity to ISIL(ISIS), and the focus on ISIS is the result of Islamophobia. But I haven't seen any fact checking either supporting or refuting this analyst's assertions. See http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/10/isil-vs-mexican-drugcartelsunitedstatesislamophobia.html

That ISIS video showing the death by burning of a Jordanian fighter pilot could be considered an example of "sadistic pornography".

The discussion about spider's webs is interesting, as is the assertion that " rapid thread deformation [of the web due to insect's electrical charge] enhances the likelihood of physical contact, and thus of prey capture."But I'm skeptical about the paper's conclusion, that the effect has an impact on prey capture rates. The flight path of insects like flies is highly erratic. They don't have to be attracted to a sticky surface or thread, or have the thread deform, to get trapped by it. I have had a problem with fly infestations in my bedroom, and a couple of strips of sticky long flypaper suspended from the ceiling are VERY effective in clearing the room of these insects. The reason is that these flies are executing a three dimensional random walk all over the room, and with time will encounter these long sticky strips, even though these strips' areas (their collision cross sections, i.e. their length times their width) is miniscule compared to the total volume of the room.

Carl Jung in his essay After the Catastrophe (1945) discusses the situation of the Germans and the Nazi phenomenon. A couple of observations from Jung could be relevant to the soldiers' artistic work documented in the article from the National Geographic (see link in previous post): "...the tide that rose in the unconscious after the first World War was reflected in individual dreams [of my German patients], in the form of... mythological symbols which expressed primitivity, violence, cruelty: in short, all the powers of darkness." "I was able to... observe how the uprush of dark forces deployed itself in the individual test-tube. I could watch these forces as they broke through the individual's moral and intellectual self-control, and as they flooded his conscious world."

A quote from Carl Jung on the subject of "masks": The persona, for Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, was the social face the individual presented to the world"a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and on the other to conceal the true nature of the individual". One wonders what Jung would have thought about the masks created by these veterans, as their intent in creating them was to reveal, rather than to conceal, aspects of their true nature as individuals. See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/22/veterans-art-therapy_n_6526040.html

I don't think that there is a uncontroversial standard for being good at physics and mathematics. The people called "string theorists" would consider themselves good at physics and mathematics. And while it could be conceded that they are clever in the way that they use mathematics, physicists such as Laurence Krauss don't consider their work to be of value in terms of being relevant to the important issues in physics, because their predictions can't be verified or refuted by measurements or experiments.

Most custom fitted hearing aids are now fabricated using 3D printing. See https://audicus.com/3d-print-your-future-digital-hearing-aids/

Here is another good application of 3D printing:Custom 3d printed orthotic insoles. http://www.sols.com I had a custom set made the old fashioned way. This kind of product can improve the comfort of wearing shoes for many people. It did for me.

Some of organizations whose activities and exhibits interest me, such as local art museums, post to Facebook, as do several companies whose software applications I utilize. Facebook's personal social networking feature is for me of secondary importance.