If the myriad of emails coming into my inbox every day are representative of reality, there are many reputable universities willing to offer an easy path to a degree, many “nice girls” would love to share their pictures with me, Africa is full of rich orphans looking for an escape (along with a nice reward [...]

Senator Warner has a brilliant idea how to reduce gas prices; force Americans to consume less at gun point: Sen. John Warner, R-Va., asked Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to look into what speed limit would provide optimum gasoline efficiency given current technology. He said he wants to know if the administration might support efforts in [...]

Seen on Colbert: Sounds like a very cool concept… But his use of terms like what “the plan we would like to see implemented” worries me. I’m a much bigger fan of letting the market decide, not relying on some collective implementation of a plan* (i.e. government). So I went and checked out the group’s [...]

From the AP, sure to be an environmentalist’s wet dream: High gas prices have driven a Warren County farmer and his sons to hitch a tractor rake to a pair of mules to gather hay from their fields. T.R. Raymond bought Dolly and Molly at the Dixon mule sale last year. Son Danny Raymond trained [...]

Now, you’re not going to hear me defend Raul Castro very often, but he has at least made some slight easing on the restrictions of ordinary Cubans. Among other things, he’s lifted the ban on private ownership of cell phones. Most of the changes are very small, but typically freedom is an infectious organism, and [...]

Allow me to engage in a bit of strawman-bashing. In the comments to Don Boudreaux’s excellent post at Cafe Hayek, a rather idiotic argument came up. It is the same argument that many of our own contributors received when we opposed Ron Paul, and commenters told us “If you don’t like Ron Paul, you must [...]

This post is intended to help internet users who make legitimate, non-criminal use of the internet avoid being caught by the FBI’s hyperlink honeypot. While there are methods that can be used to cover deliberate criminal activity on the internet, I will not post them here. Declan McCullagh brings scary news of the latest tactics [...]

As a member of the internet generation, I do more things online these days than offline. In the world of commerce, there are a host of simple and useful tools, created by companies, that make it very easy for me to accomplish what I want to accomplish. Need a map? Google. Need information on where [...]

…or you just might find yourself supporting the American Socialist Party: For years the masses have told you that if you snooze you lose. You never believed them. You held your head high and slept in whenever you wanted to, always without fear of loss. Well, dear friends, the times have changed. The ingenious sages [...]

Democrats seem to want the federal government to invest huge sums of money in development of alternative energy sources. tarran, last year, pointed out that government has all the wrong incentives and thus often picks the most politically-palatable technologies, not the most effective. This is currently occurring in Britain, a nation which has gone down [...]

Last week, I posted about California’s proposed Big Brother Thermostat proposal, where they were planning to mandate that all new thermostats allowed the state utility companies to shut off your A/C if it was an “emergency”. They’ve backed down on this one, but only slightly: As initially proposed, these programmable thermostats would have deferred in [...]

The brainiacs who’ve made air travel almost as fun as a 10-hour Coca-Cola enema have unveiled their new master plan for creating an efficient security system…federally mandated drivers licenses for everybody under the age of 50, which all states will be forced to comply with by 2011, whether they’re capable or doing so or not, [...]

Occasionally there are changes coming down the pipe that even non-politicos don’t like. Usually, the only ones that draw ire from the “average” citizen are those that are widespread and hit close to home. California has proposed a policy that so neatly fits both categories that people like my wife (a probable Obama voter!) respond [...]

It’s often said that if a politician or newsmaker wants to make sure something gets swept under the rug, they’ll ensure it drops on a Friday afternoon. That way, the media gets distracted by other stories by the time Monday rolls around, and they can hope that it gets reported without fanfare. So what does [...]

Web giants to settle gambling allegations The U.S. attorney in St. Louis announced the settlements Wednesday with Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc., which she accused of selling ads that steered U.S. Web surfers to offshore gambling websites. The Justice Department considers publishers of such gambling ads to be accessories to a crime. Without [...]

In 1973, OPEC announced an embargo of oil sales to countries whose governments had supported Israel in the Yom Kippur war. In the U.S. this precipitated a major economic crisis as the U.S. government attempted to ration gasoline and control production and sale through a regime of price controls. The U.S. Central bank also embarked [...]

To obtain shellfish, it’s often required dredging the sea floor. That’s a particularly nasty proposition, because it destroys reefs harboring complex ecosystems. And at the same time, it’s not particularly energy-efficient, and the damage done tends to also damage the shellfish recovered. However, a new type of non-invasive dredge is changing that (at least for [...]

Have a small business offering wifi access? Have a home wireless connection that you’ve not secured? Well, consider yourself “deputized”. You may not know how to even track your who is using your internet connection, but you may soon be legally required to do so: What’s SAFE? It stands for the Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online [...]

I’ve long been a fan of Intrade, as I’ve pointed out here, here, and here. I’ve noted that Ron Paul, for quite some time, has been trading higher on Intrade than he’s been polling. But something recently changed, and rather inexplicably. When the Ron Paul advocates raised $4.2M in one day, I expected to see [...]

Amazon user data request dropped Federal prosecutors have withdrawn a subpoena seeking the identities of thousands of people who bought used books through online retailer Amazon.com Inc., newly unsealed court records show. The withdrawal came after a judge ruled that the customers had a 1st Amendment right to keep their reading habits from the government. [...]