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Kids: Smarter Than Adults
It’s happened yet again: I found another movie presumably made for kids that easily beats many of this season’s predictable box-office yawners. The movie this time is The Pirates! Band of Misfits. It...
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A Total Dedication to Sponges
I was strolling along the wharf in Bodrum, Turkey, and I was intrigued to see some natural sea sponges on a table with a merchant behind the table telling me something about them in Turkish. I vaguely...
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Government Targets the Breeders
It occurs to every kid of a certain age. Let’s say the kid has a hamster, and then two, and they make babies. New value, new commodities. This is fantastic! Maybe the kid can breed hamsters, sell them,...
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Storm Economics in One Lesson
In a natural disaster like Hurricane Sandy, the only thing people should fear more than the storm is the government’s response. Let us count the ways. Mandatory evacuations presume that politicians...
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Gas Lines are Not Sandy’s Fault
It’s crazy in New York and New Jersey, and commentators are mystified. Hurricane Sandy was bad enough. That’s a natural disaster, and we are dealing with it. But then came the unnatural disaster in the...
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This Way to the Slaughterhouse
Madison, Wis., was in lockdown mode last night, a day before the visit by the president of the United States. It is Obama’s last stop before Election Day. It just so happened that he and I were in town...
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Are These the End Times?
[Editorial note: Doug French is co-author of this piece today] Why all the long faces? The election results seem to have sent many people into fits of depression, hysteria, and rage. Commentators on...
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Clothing for All: The Slow, but Relentless Revolution
I was out shopping for a new winter coat, hopping from store to store looking for a good deal. To my astonishment, it was almost impossible not to find a good deal. Coats of a quality that once cost...
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A Day in the Beast’s Belly
The Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress is the least governmentlike building among all the tax-funded monstrosities in the nation’s capital. It was completed in 1897, at the tail end...
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I, Twinkie
Oh how everyone (of a certain class and income) makes fun of the Twinkie, the ultimate symbol of modern food decadence and phoniness. I don’t get it. Have the critics ever tried one? They are so...
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The Skill Set of the Young and Smart
The unemployment rate for 19-24 year olds hasn’t moved much since 2008, and the reality of the tight job market has fully dawned on the young people I’ve spoken with about this. They know that odds are...
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Protectionism is a Rip-Off
Winter is upon us, and that means digging out of our closets a whole variety of different kinds of shoes. There are insulated hiking boots, trail shoes, specialized hunting boots, waterproof shoes, and...
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Which E-book Reader Should You Buy?
We are still in the early stages of a literature revolution, a migration from physical to digital, and it is tremendously exciting to see the number of options that have become available. I still...
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Lincoln Uncensored
To be sure, this was a mind-bending experience. I watched Steven Spielberg’s movie Lincoln on the same weekend that I read Joseph Fallon’s Lincoln Uncensored, the e-book of the week released by the...
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Will Your Office Pool Get You Arrested?
I’m not a bettin’ man, probably because I’ve lost every time I’ve tried it. Still, I benefit from those who do. We all do. Betting odds give us information about what others believe, same as stock and...
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The Homogenization of the Car
The antique car, specially ordered for the occasion, was waiting for the bride and groom to take them to the party after the wedding. I was among the guests who were more enraptured by the car than by...
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Why the Rich Immolate Themselves
In the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, the American rich walked tall. They dressed the part. Top hats, canes, tails, spats, you name it. They built glorious mansions for all the world to see. They...
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The Holy Hangman Still Kills
Half of Americans think that government is their benefactor. The other half think it is a sworn enemy. Depending on the day and the issue, they can and do switch sides. These hydraulics are at work in...
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The Christmas Story’s Hidden Capitalism
People talk like capitalism is some strange foreign invader, a mechanical system that was imposed on the world a couple hundred years ago, fueled by burning coal and emitting smoke, and certainly not...
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How the State Will Die
Google bought YouTube in 2006 at the height of the infringement hysteria. The new owners got busy trying to get the platform up to legal standards and avoid billions in pending lawsuits. It seems that...
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