I received a postcard in yesterday’s mail. The first paragraph reads: “The City of Tallahassee’s Office of Cross-Connection Control monitors actual or potential backflow via cross connections with non-approved water sources. We are committed to the quality of water delivered to our customers, and your drinking water remains clean and free of contaminants [sic]....
Read More »

The Spring 2013 issue of The Independent Review—the Independent Institute’s flagship scholarly journal, edited by Robert Higgs—is hot off the press. Below you’ll find links to articles and book reviews that address a host of intriguing questions: Why have domestic police agencies across the United States resorted increasingly to “no-knock” raids and other military-type...
Read More »

When is a cancer cluster the result of environmental contamination—and when is it a misleading statistical artifact? Science journalist George Johnson deals with this question in his latest article for Slate, “Cancer Cluster or Chance?” Johnson’s skill in explaining why we often misinterpret epidemiological data can be seen in his opening paragraphs: Lay a...
Read More »

The culmination of last night’s Oscars broadcast with a Live! feed from the White House with Mrs. Obama (hangin’ with her military BFs) marks the official recognition of the Presidency as theater: like the old Western sets, no substance required. From the very beginning, President Obama was elected based on his strong delivery of...
Read More »

One suggestion for dealing with greenhouse gas emissions is to implement a revenue-neutral tax on carbon emissions. If we implemented a carbon tax and cut income taxes by the same amount, we would be reducing taxes on something we want (income) and increasing taxes on something we don’t (air pollution). As good as it...
Read More »

The Daily Mail of London has reported that despite its support for global warming alarmism, Britain’s National Weather Service (U.K. Met Office) has quietly unveiled a report admitting that there has been no warming from January 1997 through August 2012. (Here also are the data sets for the report as well as an analysis...
Read More »

It always astonishes me that a publication calling itself a “newspaper” can report as fact, leaving no allowance for the possibility of error, a story such as this: “As Waters Warm, Predators’ Hunger Games Will Get Tougher.” [Note that the online version tones it down a bit: “...predators may go hungry.” (Emphasis added.) Hedging...
Read More »

The EPA issued new rules requiring the average fuel efficiency of new cars and trucks to get 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. President Obama said, “These fuel standards represent the single most important step we’ve ever taken to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.” The new standard is a goal, not a policy....
Read More »

I was pleased to learn that today is the Eighth National Day of the Cowboy. As such, it’s especially appropriate that we take advantage of the opportunity to set the record straight on many things Cowboy and Western. First of all, the Old West was far more peaceful than is commonly portrayed in movies...
Read More »

It was one thing for gullible college students in the late 1960s to present themselves for voluntary sterilization as a result of their buying into Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb myth. In keeping with the premise of the annual Darwin Awards, it might be just as well that those so prone to falling for groundless...
Read More »