ANDREW SULLIVAN: America’s New Religions. “Our modern world tries extremely hard to protect us from the sort of existential moments experienced by Mill and Russell. Netflix, air-conditioning, sex apps, Alexa, kale, Pilates, Spotify, Twitter … they’re all designed to create a world in which we rarely get a second to confront ultimate meaning — until a tragedy occurs, a death happens, or a diagnosis strikes. Unlike any humans before us, we take those who are much closer to death than we are and sequester them in nursing homes, where they cannot remind us of our own fate in our daily lives. And if you pressed, say, the liberal elites to explain what they really believe in — and you have to look at what they do most fervently — you discover, in John Gray’s mordant view of Mill, that they do, in fact, have ‘an orthodoxy — the belief in improvement that is the unthinking faith of people who think they have no religion.’ . . . And so the young adherents of the Great Awokening exhibit the zeal of the Great Awakening. Like early modern Christians, they punish heresy by banishing sinners from society or coercing them to public demonstrations of shame, and provide an avenue for redemption in the form of a thorough public confession of sin. ‘Social justice’ theory requires the admission of white privilege in ways that are strikingly like the admission of original sin. A Christian is born again; an activist gets woke. To the belief in human progress unfolding through history — itself a remnant of Christian eschatology — it adds the Leninist twist of a cadre of heroes who jump-start the revolution.”
Search Results
SUMMER’S HERE AND THE TIME IS RIGHT – FOR THE OBLIGATORY LEFTY FREAKOUTS OVER AIR CONDITIONING: We Could Have a Serious Air Conditioning Problem By Mid-Century.
Summers are growing warmer, and we’ll need cooler air—especially for our young students to focus during school hours, and for the sick and elderly. But using air conditioners shouldn’t be a careless act, not when some people are dying from the air pollution they create—and especially when these people are more likely to be low-income or of color.
That can change. Keep that in mind next time you crank your central cooling system to high.
Sod off, swampy.
Flashback: Earth Day predictions of 1970. The reason you shouldn’t believe Earth Day predictions of 2009.
“PROGRESSIVISM,” WHERE TIME STANDS STILL.
● Shot:
Since the 1960s the prosperity and ethos of the California working class have spread to workers all over America–so much so that the terms working class and workers have become archaic. Today electricians, air-conditioning mechanics, burglar-alarm installers, cablevision linemen are routinely spoken of as middle-class. Many journeymen mechanics live on a scale that would have made the Sun King blink. They are a new class that has seriously altered the political make-up of this country over the past 25 years. And Ronald Reagan was their first spokesman, their first leader, their first philosopher. The existence of this class continues to baffle Democratic Party leaders. Their biggest problem in the presidential election this fall is what to do about these people whose goals they still do not understand.
—Tom Wolfe, “Head of The Class,” National Review, August 5, 1988.
● Chaser: “[Washington] Post: Trump voters remain loyal because they feel disrespected.”
—John Sexton, Hot Air, today.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
The actors posed for photographs on the red carpet as publicists and security readied for the deluge of stars expected for the show. The red carpet for the first time is tented and air conditioned to provide for some relief from the usually warm temperatures in Los Angeles in September. The temperatures are in the 70s on Sunday and the air conditioning was a welcome respite from recent years of sweltering Emmys red carpets.
—The Washington Post, yesterday.
● I don’t need air conditioning, and neither do you.
—Headline, the Washington Post, August 18, 2016.
Fortunately for all of us, the author of that 2016 has done little to persuade her boss.
IT’S ABOUT SEXISM, ISN’T IT? AND PROBABLY RACISM. How Air-Conditioning Conquered America (Even the Pacific Northwest).
“YOU GUYS GO FIRST. THEN WE’LL TALK.” Hot take: Summer’s here, and so are the annual MSM pieces about giving up air conditioning: “I dare you turn off your a/c in your server rooms. See how many hits you get then.”
UNLESS YOU’RE A SAILOR: Autonomous Ships Will Be Great.
It sounds like a ghost story: A huge cargo vessel sails up and down the Norwegian coast, silently going about its business, without a captain or crew in sight. But if all goes as planned, it’s actually the future of shipping.
Last week, Kongsberg Gruppen ASA, a Norwegian maritime-technology firm, and Yara ASA, a fertilizer manufacturer, announced a partnership to build the world’s first fully autonomous cargo containership. Manned voyages will start in 2018, and in 2020 the Yara Birkeland will set sail all on its own. It’s the beginning of a revolution that should transform one of the world’s oldest and most conservative industries — and make global shipping safer, faster and cleaner than it’s ever been.
The commercial rationale for autonomous ships has long been clear. The U.S. Coast Guard has estimated that human error accounts for up to 96 percent of all marine casualties. A recent surge in piracy is a grim reminder that crews remain vulnerable (and valuable) targets for international criminals. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the industry is facing a chronic shortage of skilled workers who want a career at sea.
By one consultant’s estimate, moreover, carrying sailors accounts for 44 percent of a ship’s costs. That’s not just salaries: crew quarters, air-conditioning units, a bridge (which typically requires heavy ballast to ensure a ship’s balance) and other amenities take up valuable weight and space that might otherwise be used for cargo.
Hmm. I’m not convinced that this will put an end to piracy, though it may change its form.
BILL MCKIBBEN: We Need The Moral Equivalent Of War On Climate Change.
I agree, and as my first act of wartime sacrifice, I vote to ban air-conditioning in Washington, DC.
For my second act of wartime sacrifice, I vote to raise taxes on coastal cities.
And I don’t want to hear any backtalk. This is war, boys!
WE’RE GOING TO TAKE THINGS AWAY FROM YOU ON BEHALF OF THE COMMON GOOD:
Shot: ‘Like a Furnace’: New Yorkers Sweat It Out as Reports of Hot Subway Cars Rise.
—Headline, the New York Times, yesterday.
Chaser: I don’t need air conditioning, and neither do you.
—Headline, the Washington Post, August 18th.
(Classical reference in headline.)
SHOT: WaPo: I Don’t Need Air Conditioning And Neither Do You.
Chaser: The Inferno: Summer Heat Batters Public Housing Residents.
So nobody needs A/C — except prisoners and welfare recipients. Got it.
I say, ban A/C in DC!
OUTLAW AIR CONDITIONERS, AND ONLY OUTLAWS WILL HAVE THEM! Why does the New York Times Consider Air Conditioning Vital for Prisoners, Bad for Planet?
I WONDER WHAT THE FRAMERS OF THE EIGHTH AMENDMENT WOULD SAY? In U.S. Jails, a Constitutional Clash Over Air-Conditioning.
The air inside the Jefferson Davis Parish jail was hot and musty. Prisoners, often awakened by the morning heat, hoped for cooling rain after nightfall. And ice, one inmate recalled, brought fleeting relief in the cell she called a “sweatbox.”
Even though summer temperatures routinely roar past 100 degrees here, the jail, like scores of other jails and prisons across the country, has no air-conditioning.
“It’s hot,” Heidi Bourque, who was locked up this month for theft, said of the jail as she sat in her home, where the glowing red digits of the living room thermostat showed the temperature as a chilling 62. “It’s miserable.”
Her complaints are unlikely to move local residents, who approved funding to build a new jail after local leaders promised two years ago that it would not pamper inmates with air-conditioning. But they speak to a broader debate about the threshold for when extreme temperatures become cruel and unusual punishment.
So let me get this straight: America’s “obsession” with air conditioning is stupid according to Europeans, and the Washington Post thinks air conditioning is sexist, but taxpayer-paid AC is a constitutional right if you’re in jail?
Sorry, but I’d not only forego taxpayer-paid AC for prisoners, I’d ban it for bureaucrats, too.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
In the ramshackle apartment blocks and sooty concrete homes that line the dusty roads of urban India, there is a new status symbol on proud display. An air-conditioner has become a sign of middle-class status in developing nations, a must-have dowry item.
It is cheaper than a car, and arguably more life-changing in steamy regions, where cooling can make it easier for a child to study or a worker to sleep.
But as air-conditioners sprout from windows and storefronts across the world, scientists are becoming increasingly alarmed about the impact of the gases on which they run. All are potent agents of global warming.
—“In Rising Use of Air-Conditioning, Hard Choices,” the New York Times, June 20th, 2012.
Flash-forward to today’s New York Times headline: “In U.S. Jails, a Constitutional Clash Over Air-Conditioning.” Alan Blinder, the Timesman who wrote the story tweeted a link to his article, noting that “Most of Texas’s state prisons don’t have air-conditioning. That’s not just a Texas thing.”
Given the brutal Texas summer heat, I’m pretty sympathetic to his argument that prisons deserve some level of climate control in the summertime. But I don’t work for a newspaper that has spent the last 30 years or so tut-tutting its benefits for the rest of us. Or as Glenn tweets, “How can air conditioning be a constitutional right? Euros think it’s stupid and WaPo says it’s sexist.”
Not to mention John Kerry’s recent assertion that air conditioning is more deadly than ISIS.
Valerie Jarrett Scolds Americans For Drinking Beer During A Heat Wave
And instead recommends staying inside with the air conditioning cranked up. Except….
Ride the Mommy Party Mobius Loop! (And don’t forget to sign the petition reminding John Kerry to keep his word: Remove air conditioning from all US State Department property.)
TWO BERNIES IN ONE!
—Headline, The Hill, yesterday.
—Headline, CNN, January 28th.
Any word on how Bernie comes down on the whole air conditioning is as deadly as ISIS question?
Related: And in case you missed it earlier, Sign Petition: ‘Remove air conditioning from all US State Department property’ – Prompted By Kerry’s comments.
Related to my proposal to ban air conditioning in Washington, DC. But this is a good first step.
BRING BACK DDT: Puerto Rico Braces For Its Own Zika Epidemic.
On an inexorable march across the hemisphere, the Zika virus has begun spreading through Puerto Rico, now the United States’ front line in a looming epidemic.
The outbreak is expected to be worse here than anywhere else in the country. The island, a warm, wet paradise veined with gritty poverty, is the ideal environment for the mosquitoes carrying the virus. The landscape is littered with abandoned houses and discarded tires that are perfect breeding grounds for the insects. Some homes and schools lack window screens and air-conditioning, exposing residents to almost constant bites.
The economy is in shambles, and thousands of civic workers needed to fight mosquitoes have been laid off. The chemical most often used against the adult pests no longer works, and the one needed to control their larvae has been pulled from the market by regulators.
A quarter of the island’s 3.5 million people will probably get the Zika virus within a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and eventually 80 percent or more may be infected.
Since Zika can be sexually transmitted, once it’s established within a population it’ll be hard to eradicate, since at that point mosquito control won’t be enough.
ADVANCES IN RADIATIVE COOLING. “In 2014, the group published a paper in Nature in which they showed that a device designed to combine the optical properties of three different materials, arranged in stack of multiple layers, cooled to nearly 5 °C below the ambient air temperature.” Hmm. I’m skeptical, but if it works, it works.
TWO WASHINGTON POSTS IN ONE:
● “History’s greatest invention: the refrigerator.”
—Headline, the Washington Post, December 4th, 2015.
● “Europe to America: Your love of air-conditioning is stupid.”
—Headline, the Washington Post, July 22nd, 2015.
● “Air Conditioning Is A ‘Big, Sexist Plot,’* Washington Post Investigation Reveals.”
—Headline, the Daily Caller, July 25th, 2015.
* Of course it is. Isn’t everything?
GENERATOR SALES ARE RISING: “Generators are where central air-conditioning was in the 1960s.”
With various regulatory changes making power outages seem more likely, I expect the appeal to continue. In the Third World, everybody who can afford one has a generator. And, well, . . .
NARRATIVE CONTROL: Why Did the Media, All at Once, Proclaim the Evils of Air Conditioning?
WHEN MORE WOMEN GO TO COLLEGE THAN MEN, IT’S WOMEN RULE, MEN DROOL.
But when more women have college debt, it’s Student Loan Debt Is Leaving Women Broke and Vulnerable.
But it’s all just so distressing. Bring out the fainting couch!
Across the United States, women like Stallings are staring down piles of student debt—bigger piles, in fact, than the ones facing their former male classmates. They’re also making less money with which to pay off that debt. The combination is making women poorer, more dependent, and setting them up for a more tenuous retirement. And it’s creating a systematic gender wealth gap that persists for women’s entire lives. . . .
There is some degree of “choice” involved in the pay gap – insofar as women funneled into certain careers and men into others is a “choice.” More women major in the humanities than in fields like business, engineering and the sciences, which usually lead to better-paying jobs after graduation. Within employment sectors, men gravitate toward high-paying specialties, while women may focus on areas that are more fulfilling or more flexible, but less remunerative.
I thought we were supposed to be pro-choice. And shouldn’t the scare-quotes go around “funneled?”
Related: Women are at greater risk from global warming than men, claims MEP.
Related: Air-Conditioning Really Is a Sexist Conspiracy.
The Patriarchy gets ’em going and coming.
REALLY? BECAUSE WOMEN OF A CERTAIN AGE SEEM TO ALWAYS BE TURNING THE THERMOSTAT DOWN: Latest front in the War On Women: Air Conditioning.
And it’s sad to see Petula Dvorak end with such a sexist remark: “I’m talking short suits. They’re adorable! Plus, we’d all love to see your knees, guys.” Really? Really?
And nobody tell Ann Althouse.
STANDING UP FOR SCIENCE: America’s Air Conditioning Habit Is Eco-Friendly.
I’ve worked with Germans. And Brits. And Swedes. And Dutch people. And French people. All of whom professed themselves absolutely baffled by our insistence on wasting so much energy cooling our offices and homes, when we could just build buildings that cool themselves naturally if we open the windows occasionally.
For Europeans reading this, I may actually be able to clear up this baffling issue: Americans use air conditioning more because America is a lot hotter than Europe is. For example, in Washington, where the weather is apparently “pretty similar” to Berlin, it is expected to be 87 degrees Fahrenheit (31 Celsius) tomorrow. In Berlin, Weather.com informs me that temperatures are expected to be a torrid, sultry … 75 Fahrenheit (23 Celsius).
Of course, on any two random days, the weather might be unseasonably cold or unseasonably hot. You really need to look at monthly averages. And lo and behold, when we look, we discover that Washington has an average temperature of 88 degrees in July, while Berlin has an average temperature of … 73 (yes, that is indeed 31 and 23 Celsius).
And we’re not talking about a place that’s really hot, like Dallas (average July temperature is 96, or 36 Celsius) or Phoenix (106, or 41 Celsius). We’re just talking about a rather ordinary American city in roughly the middle of the country’s north-to-south span.
We do have some cities with more European temperatures, including San Francisco and Seattle, but they are not our largest population centers. The rest of the country, even places that are frozen wastelands in the winter, experiences summertime average highs above 80 degrees. That’s not a rogue heat wave, the kind that Northern Europeans complain about endlessly while futilely fiddling with their fans. That’s just what we Americans call “summer.” A heat wave is when it’s 100 degrees (38 Celsius) and your dog won’t go outside because the pavement burns his feet. . . .
You could argue that if Americans had not migrated en masse from the temperate north to the blistering sunbelt, we would need less energy for climate control. You could argue that, but you’d be wrong. Americans still expend much more energy heating their homes than cooling them. That’s actually not that surprising. The difference between the average temperature outside and the temperature that is comfortable inside is generally only 10 to 20 degrees in most of America, for most of the summer. On the other hand, in January, the residents of Rochester, New York — the cold, snowy, rapidly depopulating area that my mother hails from — you need to get the temperature up from an average low of 18 degrees (-8 Celsius) to at least 60 or 65. That takes a lot of energy.
On average, the move from cold areas to warm ones has actually saved energy, not caused us to use more. So why are we so down on air conditioning, while accepting flagrant heat use as normal? In part, it’s because air conditioning still seems optional. Unlike a cold winter with no heat, a hot summer with no cooling won’t definitely kill you.
Also, snobs, busybodies and puritans seem to occupy colder climates for some reason.
PAKISTAN HEAT WAVE KILLS 1,000: “By Thursday, the death toll from the oppressive heat wave in Sindh province topped 1,000,” CNN reports. “Daily power outages, as the city tries to keep up with the demands of 16 million residents, mean the cold storage unit that houses bodies is hot and sticky.”
Back in 2012, the New York Times tut-tutted from their air-conditioned Eighth Avenue skyscraper, “Is it a good goal for everyone in the world to have access to air-conditioning — like clean water or the Internet? Or is it an unsustainable luxury, which air-conditioned societies should be giving up or rationing?” So presumably, they’re OK with the death toll in Pakistan, right?
In sharp contrast, in her syndicated column this week Michelle Malkin writes, “Unlike Pope Francis [and Pinch Sulzberger’s cohorts – Ed], I believe that air-conditioning and the capitalists responsible for the technology are blessings to the world:”
While the pope blames commercial enterprises and the “global market economy” for causing “environmental degradation,” it is a worldwide commercial enterprise made in America that solved the human-caused degradation of, and environmental damage to, the Vatican’s most prized art and assets.
If the pontiff truly believes “excessive consumption” of modern conveniences is causing evil “climate change,” will he be shutting down and returning the multi-million-dollar system Carrier generously gifted to the Vatican Museums?
If not, I suggest, with all due respect, that Pope Francis do humanity a favor and refrain from blowing any more hot air unless he’s willing to stew in his own.
EARLIER: Unabomber or Pope Francis? Take the quiz!
And as Tom Harris of the International Climate Science Coalition asks at PJM, “The Pope’s Climate Letter Urges ‘Dialogue with Everyone,’ So Why Did Vatican Single Out and Harass Us?”
THE POPE IS WRONG ABOUT AIR CONDITIONING: It saves lives. And he uses it himself.
#GREENFAIL: Santa Monica Bets on Electric Cars, but Consumers Are Slow to Switch. Here in Knoxville, as even one of my Prius-driving buddies notes, we have electric-car charging stations all over, but you never see a single car hooked up to charge. I do see the occasional Leaf on the road, but never at the chargers. Plus, this problem: “When she or her husband, who drives a Ford Fusion plug-in hybrid, run the air-conditioning at home while charging their cars, the fuse blows, she said.” And: “Consumers have been slow to buy electric vehicles because they cost more while providing less range.” Yeah, that’s the key problem right there. Ideally, I’d keep a Tesla to drive around town, and maybe that Audi A8 TDI for long road trips. But that would mean investing as much (actually more) in cars than most people invest in their house, which isn’t very practical.
HOW THE FAILURES OF K-12 EDUCATION ARE KILLING THE SKILLED TRADES:
“We have presidents and leaders who say every child should have the opportunity to go to college.
“Unfortunately, it sends the message to parents that if they don’t send their kids to college, they’re failing.”
“Now we’re saying, ‘Where are our electricians, auto mechanics, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air-conditioning) workers and CNC (computer numeric control) operators?’” Meeusen said.
He added, “We’ve ripped out all the shop classes and replaced them with calculus.” . . .
Racine Unified School Board President Dennis Wiser agreed students in this district are given scant exposure to the trades. A glaring example, he said, is the abundant, ongoing need for welders, as shown by job postings.
“We have no courses related to that, and we have not even considered them,” Wiser said. “I’m sure we could come up with many other examples.”
“We have far too many kids in the college track,” Wiser said, “and I can’t really figure out where it’s coming from except kids don’t see a lot of examples of people in the technical areas. Typically they don’t have relatives in those workplaces.”
So, Wiser added, youths see certain kinds of jobs on TV and workers at McDonalds — but not much else.
I discuss this very problem in The K-12 Implosion.
THE NEW YORK TIMES, A JOURNALISTIC ENTERPRISE, IS AMBIVALENT ABOUT THE FREE EXPRESSION RIGHTS OF OTHERS: Which seems odd, considering they’ve hired Piss Christ “artist” Andres Serrano to illustrate at least one article (on Abu Ghraib, back in 2005).
But then, the Margaret Dumont of the publishing world gets the vapors over thoughts of you having soda, air conditioning and the Internet, let alone the First and Second Amendment.
Hillary wasn’t kidding when she said the 21st century Left was going to “take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”
IT’S NOT JUST RYAN RALLIES: Ben Cunningham sends this picture from the Nashville Tea Party meeting last night. “Glenn, we had to bring in extra chairs and turn down the air-conditioning.”
Is it me, or is there a 2010 vibe out there?
IT’S A GOOD TIME TO HONOR the Steve Jobs of Air Conditioning.
And don’t forget that air-conditioning in warm climates uses less energy than heat in cold climates. So don’t be ashamed to run the A/C.
HAZY SCIENCE: Does Hot Weather Lead To More Violence? In the pre-air-conditioning days, hot summers led to a lot of people out on the streets at night because indoors it was too hot to sleep. Now, we get the opposite effect.
Plus: “Angry people can be soothed with a cold drink.”
IN NEW YORK, saving energy with green roofs: “This month, Gov. David A. Paterson approved tax abatements to developers and building owners who install green roofs, or a layer of vegetation and rock that absorbs rainwater, insulates buildings and extends the lives of roofs. . . . Temperatures on buildings with green roofs are up to 30 percent lower during the daytime in the summer than they are on those with conventional roofs, which means that tenants on the floors below do not have to run their air-conditioning as much.”
NBC: FIGHTING THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT with outdoor air-conditioning!
I SEE THEIR LEGAL POINT, but this is a bad PR move:
A federal appeals court today will hear arguments on whether New York State can force airlines to provide passengers with cups of water, air-conditioning, and working restrooms during long delays on the tarmac.
I mean, who wants to be known as the airline that doesn’t provide working restrooms?
A BALI GREENHOUSE UPDATE:
AMID talk of offsetting the hefty carbon footprint of the United Nations climate conference in Bali, organisers missed a large elephant in the room.
The air-conditioning system installed to keep more than 10,000 delegates cool used highly damaging refrigerant gases – as lethal to the atmosphere as 48,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, and nearly the equivalent of the emissions of all aircraft used to fly delegates to Indonesia.
With hawk-eyed representatives of more than 100 green organisations present, it was probably the worst place in the world to commit an environmental faux pas.
Well, possibly.
Only 2 percent of India is air-conditioned versus 71 percent of the United States. India not only is further south but it has nearly four times the U.S. population.
Now would be a good time to make sure India gets its air-conditioning right to protect the planet.
Instead, we are worrying about what kind of light bulbs Wal-Mart sells.
He’s right. Compact fluorescents are swell — I’ve installed over a dozen now, and will have my house mostly converted soon as old bulbs burn out and I replace ’em with CFLs. But while this stuff is worthwhile, it’s not much in the great scheme of things, and the stuff that does matter gets less attention because it doesn’t fit the moralistic approach that global-warming activists have chosen to take.
That moralistic approach is also why Gore got slammed so much for hypocrisy. Carbon offsets (to the — unclear — extent that they’re non-fake) are a practical, rationalistic, capitalistic approach to a problem that has been defined in romantic, moralistic, apocalyptic terms.
Let me see if I’ve got this right. The price of all types of fuel is headed toward historically high levels. So how do we respond in this country? What are we doing, at least on principle, to cut our fuel consumption? Cranking up the AC.
I’ve never spent a summer as cold as this one. Everywhere I go, I find air conditioners running at full blast. Now, I’ve got nothing against air conditioning. But have you stepped inside an office building, train, restaurant, airport, house of worship, school, or doctor’s office lately? I rode on a train the other day that was, from one end to the other, nothing more than a rolling meat locker.
I think that air-conditioning is one of the great inventions of Western civilization. But I agree that over-airconditioning is rife, though it actually seems to me that things have been better this summer than last.
TOM MAGUIRE FINDS THIS BURIED TREASURE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES:
Senators Laud Treatment of Detainees in Guantánamo
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: June 28, 2005
WASHINGTON, June 27 – Senators from both sides of the aisle competed on Monday to extol the humane treatment of detainees whom they said they saw on a weekend trip to the military detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. All said they opposed closing the center.“I feel very good” about the detainees’ treatment, Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said.
That feeling was also expressed by another Democrat, Ben Nelson of Nebraska.
On Monday, Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, said he learned while visiting Guantánamo that some detainees “even have air-conditioning and semiprivate showers.”
Another Republican, Senator Michael D. Crapo of Idaho, said soldiers and sailors at the camp “get more abuse from the detainees than they give to the detainees.” . . .
One senator, Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, has come under criticism and apologized repeatedly for comparing reported abuses at the camps to treatment in Soviet gulags or Nazi concentration camps.
Buried, that is, on page A15. I wonder why? Maybe because good conditions at Guantanamo are old news?
“GREAT MAXWELL’S DEMONS!” Here’s some interesting stuff about the Second Law of Thermodynamics at small scales, with implications for nanotechnology.
Me, I want a Maxwellian air-conditioning system.