Kenneth Silber on Muck Rack

Kenneth Silber

New Jersey
As seen in: Splice Today, New York Post, Scientific American, Substack, Reason, City Journal, Commentary Magazine, ThinkAdvisor, The Space Review, The Unpopulist

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Kenneth Silber’s Biography

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Writer, editor and fact checker on various topics in science, economics, politics and history. Regular contributor to SpliceToday. Articles in publications including Scientific American, the Wall Street Journal and the Daily Beast. Author of book "In DeWitt's Footsteps: Seeing History on the Erie Canal."

Kenneth Silber’s Journalist Portfolio

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The Administration's Foolish War on Basic Science

The Administration's Foolish War on Basic Science

Cutting funding for gravitational wave studies won't save taxpayers much but will jeopardize future scientifi…

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Hobbit Time

Hobbit Time

Notes on technological and political change. || Kenneth Silber

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Oligarchs in Bed with Autocrats Would Kill the Prospects for Liberalism in Space

Oligarchs in Bed with Autocrats Would Kill the Prospects for Liberalism in Space

Neither Elon Musk nor the Chinese government should get to steer space policy

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Sally Ride's Enduring Legacy

Sally Ride's Enduring Legacy

The U.S. Mint recently announced the first two women who will be honored on quarters as part of a program to …

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Women, Men and Power Tools

Women, Men and Power Tools

My wife has a lot of power tools and knows how to use them. This capacity intrigues men and women alike. Her …

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It Was Fun to Be a Right-Winger Once

It Was Fun to Be a Right-Winger Once

I had my first glimmerings of political interest during the 1976 presidential election. I preferred Gerald Fo…

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Articles

Ghosts of Weimar

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By Kenneth Silber
| Splice Today Verified
Daisy was the only friend of mine who’d been in the Hitler Youth. Her formal name was Hannelore, and she’d grown up in Hanover, Germany. She said she’d attended the required meetings resentfully, which I don’t doubt. After the war, she worked for the Allied Occupation, meeting a British military officer with whom she fell in love and got married. They moved to the US, and I knew her, through my in-laws, as an elderly widow in Cleveland.
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Human and Non-Human Powers

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By Kenneth Silber
| Splice Today Verified
A post by Noah Smith lamenting the societalimpact of smartphones put me in mind of Species 8472. These were powerful creatures that appeared in four episodes of Star Trek: Voyager. Known by their Borg designation, they successfully counterattacked against the collective’s attempt at assimilation, before retreating to their native fluidic space after the Voyager crew collaborated with the Borg to deploy a nano-probe weapon against them.
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Where’s Today’s Dr. Strangelove?

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By Kenneth Silber
| Splice Today Verified
“Hey, who’s the wimp you’re hanging out with now? Einstein?” says a dumb-jock type to a pretty girl about the nerd who’s accompanying her. It’s 1962, as portrayed in George Lucas’ 1973 American Graffiti. We don’t know where the wimp will be a few years later, though. Perhaps advising the Pentagon on Operation Rolling Thunder, by which the US sought to coerce North Vietnam to stop its support for the Viet Cong through a calibrated series of bombings, which didn’t work.
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Interview

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Have you ever used a typewriter?

Yes.

Who's your favorite fictional journalist?

Peter Parker.

How do you prefer to be pitched on stories?

Email, mostly involving books I might review.
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