Category: Aggregated

It’s fun to own a “classic” (read, pre-modern) car. It can also be a hassle. Before you dive in, it’s a good idea to know what you’re in for, both good – and bad. The good: Pre-modern cars have personality; they’re interesting – something homogenized, same-same modern cars aren’t. Cars built in the ’70s and before were designed largely the way designers – rather than government bureaucrats – wanted them designed. Hence the wild fins, the jutting angles, the instantly recognizable differences between say a Chevy and a Ford (today, you tell them apart by the shape of the grille). Even such … Continue reading →

Rich!  We’re all going to be rich!  If only we could have the Super Bowl here every year! It has gotten a little noisy in the skies near my home.  With the Super Bowl here in metro-Phoenix this weekend the Scottsdale Airport is doing a rip-roaring business – emphasis on “roaring”. The airport is described as “a general aviation reliever facility with no commercial commuter or airline service.” But does it ever get the private jets of the rich and famous.  The Super Bowl is just one of the draws.  The Phoenix Open is underway in Scottsdale this weekend as … Continue reading →

There are said to be around 6,500 spoken languages around the world. While 2,000 of these languages are spoken by fewer than 1,000 speakers, others are much more common with words and phrases being passed down through generations and shared across countries and continents. A map has been designed to highlight the spread of these common languages by plotting words, and their translations, from population to population. Type a word in the interactive map below  Called Word Map, the interactive guide (pictured) was created by Easyway Language Centre in Brazil. To use the map, type any word in any language … Continue reading →

In this series on mastering your attention, we have emphasized the fact that attention is not just the ability to focus on a single task without being distracted, but in fact is comprised of several different elements that must be effectively managed. But this doesn’t mean that single-minded focus is not of paramount importance. Yesterday we compared managing your different kinds of attention to being the supreme commander of your mind – you must be able to deftly maneuver and deploy your units to various battles. But good management can only get you so far; to win the war on … Continue reading →

The United States has just made an exceptionally dangerous, even reckless decision over Ukraine. Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader who ended the Cold War, warns it may lead to a nuclear confrontation with Russia. Rule number one of geopolitics:  nuclear-armed powers must never, ever fight. Yet Washington just announced that by spring, it will deploy unspecified numbers of military “trainers” to Ukraine to help build Kiev’s ramshackle national guard. Also being sent are significant numbers of US special heavy, mine resistant armored vehicles that have been widely used in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US and Poland are currently covertly supplying … Continue reading →

Many men, and less often women, often deal with the hardships of hair loss, and accepting this problem can be quite difficult. They may have known it was coming for some time, by watching the other people in their family deal with the same issue, but that doesn’t make it any easier. Fortunately, while hair loss is largely genetic, a good diet can encourage healthy hair growth and even possibly reduce balding. Furthermore, there are a number of natural remedies for hair loss and hair thinning, so you don’t need to go straight to the drug store for pharmaceuticals. There … Continue reading →

My advice is to focus not on retiring comfortably, but on working comfortably. You’ve probably seen articles and adverts discussing how much money you’ll need to “retire comfortably.” The trick of course is the definition of comfortable. The general idea of comfortable (as I understand it) appears to be an income which enables the retiree to enjoy leisurely vacations on cruise ships, own a well-appointed RV for tooling around the countryside, and spend as much time on the golf links as he/she might want. Needless to say, Social Security isn’t going to fund a comfortable retirement, unless the definition is … Continue reading →

The core ingredients of chili are “fiery envy, scalding jealousy, scorching contempt, and sizzling scorn,” wrote New York author H. Allen Smith, in a 1967 essay for Holiday magazine. He was mostly right about that (I also like to add a dark lager) but wrong about almost everything else. Smith’s essay, titled “Nobody Knows More About Chili Than I Do,” is an historic example of pitch-perfect food trolling. In it, Smith denounces Texas and all its claims to chili dominance, and his piece culminates in a wildly misguided recipe with a special New York twist. “To create chili without beans, … Continue reading →

[This article is adapted from a talk presented at the Houston Mises Circle, January 24, 2015.] Presumably everyone in this room, or virtually everyone, is here today because you have some interest in the topic of secession. You may be interested in it as an abstract concept or as a viable possibility for escaping a federal government that Americans now fear and distrust in unprecedented numbers. As Mises wrote in 1927: The situation of having to belong to a state to which one does not wish to belong is no less onerous if it is the result of an election … Continue reading →

The stupid, it burns like a magnesium flare. Excerpt from the article: Now, you can add yet another problem to the climate change hit list: volcanoes. That’s the word from a new study conducted in Iceland and accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters. The finding is bad news not just for one comparatively remote part of the world, but for everywhere. Iceland has always been a natural lab for studying climate change. It may be spared some of the punishment hot, dry places like the American southwest get, but when it comes to glacier melt, few places are hit … Continue reading →

Steven Pifer, a senior fellow at Brookings, writes “The West, including the United States, needs to get serious about assisting Ukraine if it does not wish to see the situation deteriorate further. That means committing real money now to aid Ukraine’s defense.” ( He’s dead wrong. No matter who is in the right or wrong in Ukraine, the U.S. shouldn’t intervene further. It shouldn’t have intervened in the first place. Escalation by the U.S. and European powers will make matters worse. As a general rule, U.S. interventions make matters worse and fail to achieve even their advertised goals, about which … Continue reading →

‘The Obama administration treats journalists that “cross this administration” as “enemies of the state” who “will be attacked and punished,” according to a former CBS News investigative journalist. Sharyl Attkisson, who resigned from CBS News […]