March 29, 2016 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

Work and home life has been crazy busy the last week, so I don't have as much as usual to offer today. But here are a few things that caught my attention over the weekend and past couple of days:

• First of all, if you haven't read it already, check out the "Weekend Knowledge Dump" for this past Friday at Active Response Training.
• Ol' Remus has a new Woodpile Report up for this week.
• "Mysterious Electrical Spike Continues To Jolt BART Riders"--Martinez Patch. It must be gremlins!

The voltage spike damaged electrical components in certain train cars and took about 50 cars out of service. BART crews have inspected every inch of the tracks in the area and the electrical systems serving it, but have so far not found the source of the problem.

A similar problem damaged cars between downtown Oakland and San Francisco starting in February, but BART crews didn't get to the bottom of that problem either -- it just went away and its cause remains unclear.

• "Socialist or Fascist"--Thomas Sowell at Townhall. From the article:

What President Obama has been pushing for, and moving toward, is more insidious: government control of the economy, while leaving ownership in private hands. That way, politicians get to call the shots but, when their bright ideas lead to disaster, they can always blame those who own businesses in the private sector.

The benefits flow both ways--at least for the large and powerful industries--because they receive special privileges and protections from the government. There was a reason that the big economic interests (banks and large industrial firms) supported Hitler.

• "What If Diversity Is Our Weakness?"--Rob Dreher at The American Conservative. 

Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam — famous for “Bowling Alone,” his 2000 book on declining civic engagement — has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.

• "Slaughter at the bridge: Uncovering a colossal Bronze Age battle"--Science. Evidence of those pesky pre-Classical European civilizations keep showing up. From the article: "Thousands of warriors came together in a brutal struggle, perhaps fought on a single day, using weapons crafted from wood, flint, and bronze, a metal that was then the height of military technology." (Underline added).

(Update: took care of some typographical errors).