Fred Astaire is, of course, beyond compare. As a dancer, he had already set the bar for everyone and then he set it a lot higher when he appeared in 1951's "Royal Wedding" at age 52. Echoing a Voodoo shaman, he animated what most of us regard as inanimate and poked a little fun at younger competitor Gene Kelly in the process when he danced with a hat rack the way only a genius can.(1)
But he blew minds when he danced on the ceiling in that same movie, to the tune "You're All The World To Me", written by "Brigadoon" lyricist Alan Jay Lerner.
Like all great illusions, it relies on our grounding in science. Gravity works, people don't dance on the ceiling. Audiences raved over it.
Next month, the US and Europe would like to make some progress in tearing down trade barriers, an archaic notion left over from the Colonial period in history.(1)
Special trade agreements with blocs, like The Hanseatic League of the 12th century, were always common, but restrictions enjoyed a popularity boom after the collapse of the East India Trade Company in 1799 became the poster child for the perils of free trade - 18th century globalization hysteria.
If you live in California, you can never get too amazed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. If there is a progressive position that an activist court can take, they usually take it.
If you can't go to a national chain store and get your eyes checked and buy glasses, the 9th is why - they ruled that is medical care and health care is not interstate in America. Sure, we can mandate health care and force people to pay for it under the Commerce clause, but for some reason we can't let people buy prescription glasses from an out-of-state company.
If you are a particle physicist, and not French, your career at Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire -
CERN, The European Organization for Nuclear Research and the world's largest physics laboratory - may be rather limited, it seems.
Some people believe the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a small, unified body composed of the best scientists who make proclamations on lots of things.
That isn't really true. The actual IPCC is a tiny UN group, around a dozen people, but the bulk of the data is compiled by unpaid (well, unpaid by the UN) scientists who participate in working groups that argue over the science - it is not without some flaws. They use geographical and gender parameters for participation so a working group may not have the best scientists in the world, some will have been chosen because they needed to meet a cultural quota - and they still get to be heard.
There are some places where food is easy to grow and some where it is not. Nature is not fair.
Expecting companies in countries with food to ship it everywhere for free is not practical and the poorest people don't have the money to import food, so they are stuck in a hunger Catch-22. There are differing schools of thought on how to solve the problem.
The positive approach - science - is to make it possible for food to grow in areas where food cannot grow now. Plants can be optimized scientifically to thrive in areas where they ordinarily would not. Then there is a less positive approach; tell poor people to eat bugs.
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