A compare and contrast between Nixon and Trump

Today I was watching Frost/Nixon melodrama about the famous, or infamous, Nixon interviews from 1977. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNO4iEsFlNI The movie is a condensed portrayal of both, the circumstances that brought the two people together, and the actual interview. Watching the movie got me thinking about the similarities, and differences, between President Nixon and President Trump. At the expense of stating the obvious, both have been embroiled in polarizing impeachment proceedings and are either loved or hated. Both Nixon and Trump are people that seek the approval of other people. In...

January 13, 2020

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Doug Dlod

Maybe the delay won't pay off.

The delay in sending the articles of impeachment by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the senate may not have actually paid off. Initially it was thought speaker Pelosi would be able to hold the sending of the articles to the senate until its leadership, namely McConnell, agreed to a more fairer set of rules for the trial. Earlier this week McConnell said he'd reached an agreement with his fellow republican majority which didn't include the requests from the democrats and that as such they were ready to begin...

January 10, 2020

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Doug Dlod

The facts behind the Truth

More often than not, facts and truth are not mutually exclusive. Facts are those bits of information which on their own are true, while the truth is our interpretation of those facts (including some truths). It is how we remember facts that our brains use to construct the truth. Case in point, in this episode of Planet Money, the podcast talked about how many veterans tended to dislike the Red Cross. Their dislike originated from donuts, and the fact the Red Cross charged said veterans for them during...

January 9, 2020

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Dolores Anaicna

Human Pozole?

I'm a big fan of Mexican food and seldom miss Taco Tuesdays. This is why I was so surprised to learn about the origins of one of my favorite soups, Pozole. It turns out Pozole is a very ancient soup that originated with the Aztecs and during that era, the meat was not pork or chicken, as we've become accustomed. No, it was the human remains of the captives sacrificed at the Aztec altars. Pozole was a sacred, if even, special soup that one didn't have on a...

January 6, 2020

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Wen Ruoy

PSA - Chinese budget laptops

A year back, my daughter's laptop broke. At that time I could not afford to replace it with the same MacBook Air she had and so I looked for a cheap replacement. I found one on Amazon, Jumper EzBook. If you look at the specs, the laptop is a steal. Though the CPU is not the fastest, it comes with a good amount of RAM and enough disk (considering everything is kept on the cloud these days) for normal duties. Even the screen is not so bad, with...

December 29, 2019

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Ro Saiciton

Star Wars: The raise of Skywalker?

I got a chance to watch the latest installment of the Star Wars saga, the Raise of Skywalker. Rather than giving you the normal movie review you've come accustomed to, I'll share with you the history of the saga. The star wars movies can be split into four categories: The original trilogy The prequel The sequels (of which this is an episode) The stories The original trilogy was groundbreaking. Until 1977, when the first movie was released (Episode 4: A new Hope), there had never been anything like...

December 23, 2019

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Mario Aigoloncet

Motor-less water pump?

Water is a weird substance. Think about it, unlike most other substances, it expands when it becomes a solid. This is the reason pipes can burst in the winter, and why placing a beer bottle in the freezer is a bad idea. To make things even weirder, it is slippery when it's a solid and not for the reason you'd think. This brings us to a motor-less pump called a hydraulic ram pump. This type of pump does not use a motor, and no, it does not "generate"...

December 18, 2019

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Tiab James

Why is ice slippery?

It is Winter here at headquarters and things are getting icy, and slippery. But why is that? Why is ice slippery. It makes sense that it's cold, but slippery? One of the more common reasons for why ice is slippery is there is a light layer of water atop the ice which makes the surface slippery. But if that is the case, water should be equally slippery, right? It turns out the reason is more at the molecular level. Want to find out more, see the video 🙂

December 17, 2019

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Tiab James

UK's election

The UK election, made up of 5 major parties, was largely won by the conservative party. With a majority, the leader of the party, Boris Johnson, will remain as PM and will now have the leverage and support to play hardball with the EU as they workout their divorce. Support for Brexit mimic the support for Trump in the US. The coasts and metropolitan areas were outnumbered by the rest of the nation. While places like London, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles enjoy a relatively good...

December 13, 2019

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Dolores Anaicna

Privacy and anonymity in the 2020s

Privacy is one of those privileges or commodities that we never appreciate until they are gone. I always find it fascinating that our entire world works around this one commodity, electricity, and we never take any time to appreciate its importance; either to protect it or even just to awe. Most of us will think, well, in a blackout, I could just use solar panels to charge my phone and laptop, and get a small stove (if yours is electric) and I'd be good, right? This is all...

December 12, 2019

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Mario Aigoloncet