November 29, 2023

Oil on lakes, in the ground and in oceans is naturally there; spills are inconsequential.

Jack Hellner recently suggested that oil spills are only moderately harmful to the environment. I disagree. Oil in the environment is normally there and has been for centuries. That’s how people first discovered the stuff. In ...

September 30, 2021

Oil spills into the environment are normal and may even be beneficial

I don't understand the commotion over oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico from drilling operations after Hurricane Ida.  Oil has always oozed out of the ground to foul land, lakes, and oceans.  That's how people ...

August 7, 2021

Anthony Fauci Peaked In Medical School

Dr. Anthony Fauci has an impressive resume but nothing in it meant that he was qualified to be the ultimate decision-maker for a contagious disease, especially one that his actions helped create. It’s high time his wings are clipped before more...

March 27, 2021

Why we might soon see big-time deflation

I'm skeptical of all of the soft sciences.  I'm especially down on economists, be they Keynesian or Austrian.  If they were merely stupid, they would get maybe half of their predictions right, but these fellows manage to g...

June 17, 2020

How the ancient Romans dealt with statue problems

Some years ago, my wife and I toured the ancient sites where St. Paul lived and preached in Turkey. The tour guide pointed out the small heads and cracked necks on statues of Roman emperors who were also considered to be gods. This business of tearin...

April 4, 2020

An infectious diseases doctor muses on COVID-19

I recently retired from my 45-year career as an Infectious Diseases consultant and can claim some authority and interest in the  COVID-19 pandemic. No one has, so far as I can tell talked about some curious aspects of this outbreak.  Why...

November 6, 2018

John Taylor Gatto, education legend: RIP

John Taylor Gatto, an educational rebel and advocate of "unschooling," died last week.  We lost a great and vigorous voice for liberty. John had been a schoolteacher in New York City for 21 years; had been named the city's ...

November 2, 2018

What Michigan's Radioactive Boy Scout Tells Us about American Education

The Public Education nomenklatura boost their credibility by inventing for themselves a glorious pedigree implying that public schools (P.S.) have been around forever.  They also claim that going to school longer will boost a young person...

October 26, 2018

Michiganders want global warming.

Controlling our climate is a big deal for some constituencies.  Despite claims of "global warming," "climate change," or whatever this week's terminology is, increased CO2 from burning fossil fuels has served as a cr...

September 26, 2018

What good are state education rankings?

I got my copy of Reason Magazine yesterday.  The headline article (behind a paywall), "Everything You Know about State Education Rankings Is Wrong" by Stan J. Liebowitz and Matthew I. Kelly, supports yet another indictment of the ...

August 26, 2018

When my votes didn't count

The solons of our sophisticated society assure us that there is no election fraud.  Concerns about elections in which non citizens participate and fanatical partisans vote multiple times are dismissed as a paranoid right wing fantasy. ...

June 20, 2018

Is Donald Trump pre-empting a shooting war with China?

The article "China's Next Ten Years" by Roy C. Smith of NYU's Stern School of Business in the summer 2018 Independent Review brings together the well documented economic and societal problems of China, which has simil...