Let Logicians Fight Their Battles As I Leave the Room, by Petrarch
The poet, churchman, and man of letters says a logician's "rapid retreat" shows a trace of decency. "Use my arguments with the disciples of your ancient logician. Do not deter them from the study of logic; urge them rather to hasten through it to better things." [READ]
posted 02.05.06 [top of page]

Detecting Lies Big and Little, by Bryan Caplan
An economist learns that he's a pathological truth-teller. [READ]
posted 12.04.05 [top of page]

The New Age Gets Old, by Dixon Wragg
Even non-fans of "the progressive social agenda" can appreciate this former New Ager's critique of how some who do support it impair their case by indulging in irrational and magical thinking. [READ]
posted 11.25.05 [top of page]

Acquiescence and Conformity, by Scott L. Fields
"He gave his students a symbol to represent their new 'community.' He invented a salute with the right hand brought up toward the right shoulder in a curled position, which he called 'The Third Wave.' This symbol...separated them and raised them above other students." [READ]
posted 11.05.05 [top of page]

Tricky Wiki; Or, Wrong in The Name Of Right, by Eric D. Dixon
Okay, here's one problem with an on-line encyclopedia that anybody can edit: ideologically motivated vandalism by the intellectually dishonest. [READ]
posted 11.02.05 [top of page]

The Meaning of Christmas
As understood by the King James Bible, John Milton, Ben Jonson, Henry Vaughan, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, O. Henry, Leonard Peikoff, Jeremy Hedley, Adam Cohen, Wirkman Virkkala, Brett Benson, and Adrianna Whitley. The bottom line: "Christmas is about presents to you...." [READ]
posted 12.25.05 [top of page]

Thundering Clouds in January, by Aidan Charles
"I was sitting at my desk. There were charts piled high and I was dutifully making my way down the stacks, calling patients with their test results and following up on their many ills, when I caught sight of a thick letter addressed to me. It was from the risk management department of the hospital at which I completed my residency. It stated that I was being sued." [READ]
posted 02.08.06 [top of page]

Hiccup Businesses, by Robert J. Ringer
It's better to be in a business that can thrive when the hiccups come, as opposed to being in a business at very big risk of going out of business when the hiccups come. [READ]
posted 01.09.06 [top of page]

On Taming Dinosaurs, by Robert J. Ringer
If a business is big, that doesn’t mean it is invincible. Consider what happened to Publishsaurus rex...or the gaming industry in Las Vegas. [READ]
posted 12.04.05 [top of page]

Will Denise and Robin Shrug? by Robert J. Ringer
Robert Ringer is thankful for a couple customer service persons who proved to be actually dedicated to providing good customer service. Not so thankful for others he has had to deal with, though. [READ]
posted 11.26.05 [top of page]

My Five Days of Next-Day DHL Hell, by Eric D. Dixon
Mr. Dixon discovers that getting it shipped overnight doesn't necessarily mean you receive it the following day. "It all started on the evening of Thursday, August 4, 2005...." [READ]
posted 10.29.05 [top of page]

Answer to Krugman on Economic Inequality, by George Reisman
Just possibly, Paul Krugman isn't going to learn anything from this explanation. But the rest of us will. "The capital of business firms is also the foundation of the demand for labor. The wealthier and more numerous are business firms, the greater is the demand for labor and the higher are wage rates. As illustration, just consider where it is more desirable to work: in an economy with few or no business firms or only small, impoverished business firms, or in an economy with large numbers of wealthy business firms. It is obvious whose competition for one's services will be more beneficial." [READ]
posted 03.03.03 [top of page]

Corporations, by Robert Hessen
Corporations are bad. Very bad. After all, they're corporations, right? Wrong. (Well, yes, corporations are corporations, but they're not inherently malevolent.) Also, there is no reason to be going about speaking of corporations as "artificial persons." [READ]
posted 01.18.06 [top of page]

Economic Opportunities Are Waning, by Hans F. Sennholz
Two questions. One, is it really getting harder and harder to get ahead in America, despite the history of this country as a land of opportunity? Two, if so, what is the reason? [READ]
posted 12.17.05 [top of page]

Capitalism, by Robert Hessen
Who understands what capitalism really is? Not its critics. Not all of its defenders, either. [READ]
posted 12.04.05 [top of page]

Playing the Free-Market Card, by Eric D. Dixon
Mr. Dixon suggests that Orson Scott Card may be a better science fiction writer than he is a critic, especially when his criticism makes claims about economics. [READ]
posted 12.04.05 [top of page]

Run. Run, run, run. by David M. Brown
Running is good to turn to if it's been one crappy thing after another. It may on occasion be the only thing to turn to. [READ]
posted 11.12.06 [top of page]

Department of Motor Vehicles, by Larry Brody
The DMV made a mistake. Then they corrected it. Or rather, a particular person working for the local DMV corrected it, before explaining about the poster. [READ]
posted 08.31.06 [top of page]

Meet Mr. Insensitive—Me, by David M. Brown
Yes, there is only so much sympathy one can have for the delicate sensibilities of murderous Islamofascists. Beyond that point—blam! [READ]
posted 03.11.06 [top of page]

Blogging About Not Blogging, by Eric D. Dixon
Our in-house shrubblogger explains how it is done, and not done. And still not done. [READ]
posted 02.10.06 [top of page]

My Would-Be First Novel Was an Unwieldy Labyrinth from Hell, by Erika Holzer
Why it had to die. As explained by Ayn Rand. [READ]
posted 12.29.05 [top of page]

Want to Write? Toughen Up! by Alisha Karabinus
Ms. Karabinus used to be a huge fan of dewy, petal-soft flower metaphors and glistening full moons. Not so much these days. [READ]
posted 12.15.05 [top of page]

Conversation versus Quarreling, by Michel de Montaigne
The man who pioneered the art of the essay says he is happy to be defeated by the proper adversary. [READ]
posted 11.11.05 [top of page]

That Which Is That or Which, by David M. Brown
Resolved: that the proper usages of the relative pronouns "that" and "which" in relation to restrictive and nonrestrictive modifiers are a little less mutually exclusive than is sometimes affirmed; for example, by Ann Coulter. [READ]
posted 10.31.05 [top of page]

Runaway Slaves, by Jim Powell
Mr. Powell consults Runaway Slaves by Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger for details of how American slaves resisted, and escaped. [READ]
posted 01.21.06 [top of page]

The Battle for the Bill of Rights, by Jim Powell
Jim Powell argues that the struggle to add an explicit Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution was replete with irony, and foiled politics. Ultimately we have James Madison to thank for pushing it through. [READ]
posted 12.07.05 [top of page]

The Roman Legacy of Property Rights, by Jim Powell
If it weren't for the ancient Romans, it would be even easier for the politicians and bureaucrats to grab our stuff. Thanks, ancient Romans. [READ]
posted 12.20.05 [top of page]

Stephen King, In and Out of the Zone, by Ian Hamet
After reading Mr. Hamet's review, you will acquire a mysterious ability to read Stephen King's The Dead Zone. [READ]
posted 12.14.05 [top of page]

The Pleasures of The Aeneid, by Pejman Yousefzadeh
Sure, the character of Aeneas could have been a little bit better defined. "And I was somewhat displeased with Virgil's decision to discuss the after-effects of the war between the Trojans and the Latins in the opening lines of the poem rather than going into the subject after the death of Turnus..." [READ]
posted 12.04.05 [top of page]

This Just In: Consent to Kill by Vince Flynn, reviewed by Bill Quick
Says the Daily Pundit: "I suspect that if you haven't been a fan before, you'll become one literally overnight—which is the way I also suspect you're going to read this thriller—straight through the night." [READ]
posted 11.16.05 [top of page]

Want to Read Some Great Action Thrillers? by Robert James Bidinotto
Love pulse-pounding tales of efficacious heroes fighting overwhelming odds in order to win, or save, the things most precious to them in life—all in the nick of time? Sure you do. Bidinotto has spent a lifetime gulping down relentlessly paced stories of action and suspense, and now takes a little time off between pitched battles to offer judicious recommendations of the very best of the bunch. [READ]
posted 11.12.05 [top of page]

Memoranda Twain, by Mark Twain
Once upon a time there was a review of Twain's Innocents Abroad so saccharinely savage, it couldn't have been for real. Well, it wasn't. [READ]
posted 10.31.05 [top of page]

Software to Save Money on Your Taxes, by Mike Hogan
Now that the holiday season and the joy of giving are behind us, it's time for the tax season and the agony of trying to figure out how to keep Uncle Sam from taking and taking and taking. If you can't afford one of those thousand-dollar-an-hour accountants, maybe some good tax software will help. [READ]
posted 01.01.06 [top of page]

Book Sales Out of the Blue...NOT, by Bill Quick
The impresario of the mega-popular political blog Daily Pundit explains how to make money on the Internet without spamming anybody. It's quick, it's easy...well, it's Quick. [READ]
posted 11.09.05 [top of page]

The Reality Distortion Field of Steve Jobs, by Andy Hertzfeld
"Star Trek" helped the people at Apple explain what was going on with Steve Jobs. [READ]
posted 01.16.06 [top of page]

R.W. Bradford and Liberty Magazine, by Wirkman Virkkala
Bill Bradford, the founder, publisher and editor-in-chief of Liberty magazine, died December 8, 2005 at the age of 58. Wirkman Virkkala worked for Liberty and Bradford for 13 years. In these reminiscences, he talks about goals, ideas, movements, assumptions, styles, schedules, motorbikes, co-workers, typos, blurbs.... Well, he talks about a lot of stuff, frankly. Very frankly. [READ]
posted 01.03.06 [top of page]

Sex, Identity, and Stupid Ideas We Love to Live With, by Claire Wolfe
"Rick, with his entire idea of hippies spooned into his brain by the mainstream media, imagined this: all hippie chicks believe in free love. And believing in free love means that a woman will simply hop into bed (or in this case, onto a lawn) with any man. Short. Tall. Good looking. Ugly. Smart. Dumb. If a woman believes in free love, then men can just pretty much grab her off the street and screw their brains out on her." [READ]
posted 12.24.05 [top of page]

Tennessee in the Frying Pan, by H.L. Mencken
It's not just the media men of our day who blink in the face of religious fundamentalism and its insistent absurdities. Consider the Mainstream Media outlets of Tennessee of 1925. Consider "one of the best of them," the Chattanooga News. "[W]ith the actual battle joined, it began to wobble, and presently it was printing articles arguing that Fundamentalism, after all, made men happy—that a Tennessean gained something valuable by being an ignoramus—in other words, that a hog in a barnyard was to be envied by an Aristotle." And there weren't even any threats of beheadings. [READ]
posted 02.09.06 [top of page]

Smearing the Competition, by Bill Quick
The Daily Pundit sees a deliberate, calculated, dishonest effort by the reporters of a major metropolitan newspaper (hint: rhymes with "Washington Post") to discredit competition from the blogosphere. [READ]
posted 01.30.06 [top of page]

48 Hours of a Blog Story, by Bill Quick
"Around this time I finally penetrated the phone-tree wall protecting CNN and reached one of their reps. I explained who I was and the sort of tape I had, and asked if I could speak to somebody who could comment on the tape for CNN. The rep (who sounded astonishingly like the same one in the phone call) told me to go ahead and play the tape. I turned on the speaker phone and started playing. After about sixty seconds the rep simply hung up." [READ]
posted 12.04.05 [top of page]

What Robert Ringer Said Does Not Seem Correct in All Respects, by David M. Brown
Ringer argues that believing isn't always seeing. An atheist can agree, sort of. [READ]
posted 04.26.06 [top of page]

Willing Slaves, by Richard Taylor
The late philosopher explains why a particular passage of Epictetus "influenced a considerable part of my life." [READ]
posted 11.07.05 [top of page]

Caught in the American Gulag, by Thomas Andrew Olson
"Except the only evidence they have for any of this is that they found books in his condo on creating new identities and living underground lifestyles—that's it. No hard evidence of offshore cash, or offshore assets that he could quickly liquidate for cash—in fact, they can't find any money at all." [READ]
posted 01.26.06 [top of page]

Reflections on the Republican Betrayal of Individualism, by Robert James Bidinotto
You only give the benefit of the doubt when you have some doubt. [READ]
posted 12.04.05 [top of page]

Thinking About Patriotism, by Bill Quick
Mr. Quick ponders patriotism, honorable dissent, and self-contradictory apoplectic lefty assertions that Bush lied about WMD in Iraq—and decides that one of these things is not like the others...one of these things just doesn't belong.... [READ]
posted 11.19.05 [top of page]

Real ID = National ID = Real Trouble, by Bill Scannell
Legislation providing for a national ID card has been rammed into law, and in a few years we may well have to start living with it. And this is not good. Here's a quick rundown of why. [READ]
posted 01.05.06 [top of page]

How to Anchor Your Ego, by Nathaniel Branden
What if your whole sense of self is grounded in a possession or ability that suddenly plummets in value? [READ]
posted 11.15.05 [top of page]

Rapid Response to the Alito Nomination
Yes, Alito. No, Alito. Maybe, Alito. [READ]
posted 11.01.05 [top of page]

The Mutability of Species, by Charles Darwin
"Why, it may be asked, until recently did nearly all the most eminent living naturalists and geologists disbelieve in the mutability of species?" [READ]
posted 04.17.06 [top of page]

Grasshopper Was No Fool, by Claire Wolfe
Would you resign today from your most burdensome ongoing chore, and proceed to sit in the grass soaking up the honeysuckle and waiting for opportunities to fall into your lap? Claire Wolfe would. [READ]
posted 07.18.06 [top of page]

Ask What Changed, by David R. Henderson and Charles L. Hooper
In their book Making Great Decisions in Business and Life, self-help gurus and economic thinkers Henderson and Hooper point out that according to Newton's first law of motion, "A body at rest will remain at rest and a body in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force." When things that have been going a certain way suddenly change, it's not because of the factors that are still the same. [READ]
posted 01.05.06 [top of page]

How Good People Get Even Better, by Michael Masterson
Like you. Now, go forth and improve thyself. [READ]
posted 12.23.05 [top of page]

I Smoked for 50 Years, Read a Book, and Stopped Instantly, by Barbara Branden
Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking. "Near the end of the book, Allen Carr tells the reader that when he finishes he is to close the book, then smoke the last cigarette he ever will have. I finished the book, I lit a cigarette, I smoked less than half of it—and I put it out. I did not want it." [READ]
posted 12.17.05 [top of page]

Learning to Loaf, by Claire Wolfe
You wouldn't think it would be such hard work just to laze about. Well, it is! Here's the proof! [READ]
posted 12.09.05 [top of page]

How to Dance, by Scott Adams
The creator of the "Dilbert" comic strip, which is studied religiously by denizens of office cubicles everywhere, offers some self-help on how to dance less dorkishly. (Actually it's not so much a matter of "self"-help as of him helping you...we'll let Mr. Adams explain.) [READ]
posted 12.08.05 [top of page]

The Laissez Faire Books Interview with Robert J. Ringer, by David M. Brown
The famous author of Winning Through Intimidation, Looking Out for #1 and other popular self-help books talks about writing, readers, action, New Zealand, cultural unity, terrorism, God, and restoring the American Dream. [READ]
posted 12.04.05 [top of page]

Wall-Sign Wisdom, by Robert J. Ringer
The famed author of Winning Through Intimidation and Looking Out for #1 says he owes his success to signs on the wall. "Had it not been for my internalizing the words on those signs, I doubt I would have become a best-selling author." [READ]
posted 11.04.05 [top of page]

24 Or So Things About the Last Episode of "24" That Will Ever Air, by David M. Brown
"LADEN VOICE MESSAGE: You have reached the voicemail of Osama bin Laden. At the sound of the tone, please leave a--" [READ]
posted 02.13.06 [top of page]

Enter Equality 7-2521, by Ayn Rand
An excerpt from the poetic tale of a world gone dark, Anthem, by the author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. [READ]
posted 11.08.05 [top of page]

Why I Hate Sports, by David M. Brown
Why you like sports and I don't, and why I'm right and you're wrong. [READ]
posted 12.14.05 [top of page]

Jihad Begins in Europe? by Robert James Bidinotto
Bidinotto argues that France is in flames because too many in the West are giving the moral equivalent of lighting fluid and matches to the jihadists. [READ]
posted 10.10.05 [top of page]

Do You Believe in War? by J. Neil Schulman
Suppose there were a war and only one side came. [READ]
posted 10.30.05 [top of page]

Basics of Self-Defense, by Owen K. Megonow
If you haven't given much thought to how you would defend yourself in case of an assault, now is the time to give it some thought. A self-defense teacher and former bouncer and bounty hunter offers some pointers. [READ]
posted 12.12.05 [top of page]

Why The Webzine Posts Links to New Articles the Way We Do, by David M. Brown
Since you asked. [READ]
posted 01.10.06 [top of page]

Round Rects Are Everywhere! by Andy Hertzfeld
It was hard enough to trick the software into doing ovals. But rectangles with rounded corners? Come on. Wasn't Steve Jobs asking just a bit too much? [READ]
posted 12.27.05 [top of page]

"Brokeback Mountain": A Dissenting View, by Dale Carpenter
Yes, yes, we understand about how it's all very culturally controversial and everything. Now, is it a good movie? Our editor wants to know. Our author tells him. [READ]
posted 02.14.06 [top of page]

TV Review: Firefly—I Finally Saw It, by David M. Brown
Favorite characters in "Firefly"? Question does not compute. Still, there's Jayne.... [READ]
posted 01.13.06 [top of page]

Why Good Guys Like "Bad" Guys, by David M. Brown
Is it because we want to believe we're not so bad despite our own flaws and sins—or because we respond to the colorful, vital, and heroic? Let's do a study.... [READ]
posted 12.10.05 [top of page]

"Batman Begins," Again, by David M. Brown
This guy is for real. [READ]
posted 11.17.05 [top of page]