DLC wobble?
Since the draft ended in 1973, the U.S. military has become one of the nation's most conservative and rock-ribbed Republican bastions. Around the same time, New Left activists began storming the ramparts of higher education, moving universities sharply to the left. As a result, these two ostensibly nonpartisan institutions now define opposing poles on the contemporary political spectrum.
--Will Marshall, Polar Opposites
The wobble's diameter has varied since discovery, reaching its most extreme range recorded to date in 1910. The cause is unknown: barring any external force, the wobble should have eventually subsided. Originally it was believed that the wobble was caused by weather fluctuations from season to season causing shifts in atmospheric mass distribution, or possible geophysical movement beneath Earth's crust. On 18 July 2000, however, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that "the principal cause of the Chandler wobble is fluctuating pressure on the bottom of the ocean, caused by temperature and salinity changes and wind-driven changes in the circulation of the oceans."
--Chandler's Wobble
What can be done to make the military and academia more representative of the society they serve? Bringing back the draft would surely diversify the former, though there's little public appetite for it. As for colleges, maybe it's time for progressive students to resurrect the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s, taking aim this time at the new establishment of political correctness.
--Will Marshall, Polar Opposites
Five weeks after the beginning of the pause on ~January 8, 2006, the Earth still has almost no net wobble motion, aside from very minor quivers such as are typically caused by atmospheric and tidal conditions. During the past few days, however, a slight motion “backwards” can be observed in the track of the wobble. ...
Quite obviously we can deduce that there is a relatively large, developing anomaly in the spiraling motion of the spin axis, including an huge phase shift, a shortening of the length of the normal 7 year cycle, the tightening of the spiral motion into an exceptionally small spiral, and a major acceleration in the drift of the Spin Axis (secular drift of the poles, or so-called True Polar Wander). This anomaly is on-going.
--OMG! WTF? WTF?
![](http://www.michaelmandeville.com/earthmonitor/polarmotion/plots/X_Motion_In_One_XWave_2000-2007.jpg)
Or maybe progressives should begin simply by serving notice to the arch-conservatives in uniform and tenured campus radicals: The institutions you have temporarily colonized belong to all Americans, not to you.Hold on, did I miss something? Weren't us academic types supposed to be progressive?
--Will Marshall
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