What do you get when you combine helium and super-light artificial bird wings? The unbridled joy of flight. The YouTube video says it has no specific practical purpose, but I say joy is practical purpose enough.
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An Iraqi entrepreneur hangs on to his shoe manufacturing business through the war. Inspiring. Now Attiya, humbled by security fears, the shuttering of Iraqi tanning factories that provided his raw materials and an avalanche of cheap imports from China and Syria since the invasion, hangs on in a crumbling former dentist’s office with a handful […]
Police in California are ticketing owners of cars with engine modifications. “If you’re not into street racing, why would you need that?” Riverside Police Traffic Sergeant Skip Showalter asked an enthusiast during a similar crackdown last year. “Why would you want more power going to your car?” Police issued a total of forty-eight tickets for […]
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New Scientist: The Sky WILL Fall!
According to NewScientist magazine, it is in the nature of civilization to fail. Every civilisation in history has collapsed, after all. Why should ours be any different? Doomsday scenarios typically feature a knockout blow: a massive asteroid, all-out nuclear war or a catastrophic pandemic. Yet there is another chilling possibility: what if the very nature […]
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz seems to have forgotten that we don’t have free markets (yet). The idea that markets are “self adjusting,” that free, unfettered markets lead as if by an invisible hand to the well being of all, has been repeatedly refuted (the Great Depression was the most telling refutation). But it is […]
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Way to Go Montana!
Montana weighs in on the DC vs Heller gun control case. [Montana Secretary of State Brad] Johnson’s letter argued that Montana’s agreement with the United States to enter the union included Montana’s constitution at the time, which guaranteed the right of “any person” to bear arms. He urged the Supreme Court to uphold an individual […]
If so then the FBI considers you a terrorist. Not enough domestic terrorism? Redefine the terms to grow your authority. You may also be a terrorist if you: Refuse to identify yourself. Defend the constitution against the federal government and the UN. Ask to know why the police stopped you[!] Attempt to “police the police.” […]
There’s a good discussion going on over at Objectivist Living about the regulation of illegal drugs. Here’s what the OP has to say. I propose that individuals who use dangerous drugs in violation of the law not be penalized, but that it remain illegal to produce and sell dangerous, addictive drugs. I believe that allowing […]
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We never pay any-one Dane-geld
What an excellent Kipling poem RoR has brought us today. “We never pay any-one Dane-geld, No matter how trifling the cost; For the end of that game is oppression and shame, And the nation that plays it is lost!”
Over at Objectivist Living, Matus1976 asks When to Strike? I wonder what objective criteria … people might suggest would be a reasonable dividing line … when they themselves [feel] compelled to strike, or perhaps when we ought to be morally obligated (if ever) to strike. Perhaps we go by a general rating of economic freedom? […]